Mount Dragon

“Fuck it,” de Vaca said. “I’m taking a drink.” She reached back for the saddlebag.

“Wait,” said Carson. “Wait a moment. When your ancestors crossed this desert, did they break down like that?”

There was a silence.

“Don Alonso and his wife crossed this desert together. And they nearly died of thirst. You told me so.”

De Vaca looked to one side, refusing to answer.

“If they had lost their discipline, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t try to mind-fuck me, cabrón.”

“This is for real, Susana. Our lives depend on keeping these horses alive. Even if we become too weak to walk, we’ll still be able to travel if we keep these horses in good condition.”

“OK, OK, you’ve talked me out of a drink,” she snapped. “I’d rather die of thirst than listen to you preach, anyway.” She pulled savagely on her horse’s lead rope. “Get your ass moving,” she muttered.

Carson fell back a moment to examine Roscoe’s hooves. There was some chipping around the edges, but otherwise they were holding up. No signs of real danger, like bruising or cracks that ran into the corona. They could go perhaps another mile on the lava.

De Vaca was waiting for him to catch up, glancing at the vultures overhead. “Zopilotes. They’re already coming to our funeral.”

“No,” said Carson, “they’re after something else. We’re not that far gone.”

De Vaca was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry I’ve been giving you a hard time, cabrón,” she said at last. “I’m kind of a cranky person, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I noticed the first day we met.”

“Back at Mount Dragon, I thought I had a lot to be pissed off about. In my life, in my job. Now, if we can just get out of this furnace without dying, I swear I’ll appreciate what I have a little more.”

“Let’s not start talking about dying yet. Don’t forget, we have more than ourselves to live for.”

“You think I can forget that?” de Vaca said. “I keep thinking about those thousands of innocent people, waiting to receive PurBlood on Friday. I think I’d rather be here, in this heat, than lying on a hospital cot with an IV draining that stuff into my veins.”

She lapsed into silence for a moment.

“In Truchas,” she resumed, “we never had heat like this. And there was water everywhere. Streams came rushing out of the Truchas Peaks, filled with trout. You could get on your hands and knees and drink as much as you wanted. It was always ice cold, even in summer. And so delicious. We used to go skinny-dipping in the waterfalls. God, just thinking about it ...” Her voice died away.

“I told you, don’t think about it,” Carson replied.

There was a silence.

“Maybe our friend is sinking his fangs into the canalla as we speak,” de Vaca added hopefully.

Inside the door, Levine halted, frozen.

He was standing on a rocky bluff. Below him, the ocean raged against a granite headland, the waves flinging themselves against the rocks, erupting in white spray before subsiding back into the creamy surf. He turned around. The bluff behind him was bare and windswept. A small, well-used trail wound down through a grassy meadow and disappeared into a thick forest of spruce trees.

There was no sign of the door leading out to the corridor. He had entered a new world entirely.

Levine’s hand fell from his laptop for a moment, and he closed his eyes against the view. It was not just the strangeness of the scene that had unnerved him: the huge, incredibly lifelike re-creation of a seacoast where an octagonal office should have been. There was something else.

He recognized the place. This was no imaginary landscape. He had been here before, many years ago, with Scopes. In college, when they had been inseparable friends. This was the island where Scopes’s family had had a summer place.

Monhegan Island, Maine.

He was standing on a bluffât the seaward end of the island. If he remembered correctly, it was called Burnt Head.

Returning his hand to the laptop, he turned in a slow, deliberate circle, watching the landscape change as he did so. Each new feature, each vista, brought a fresh rush of déjà vu. It was an incredible, almost unbelievable achievement. This was Scopes’s personal domain, the heart of his cypherspace program: his secret world, on the island of his boyhood.

Levine recalled the summer he had spent on the island. For a kid from working-class Boston, the place had been a revelation. They’d spent the long warm days exploring tidal pools and sunlit fields. Brent’s family had a rambling Victorian house, set by itself on a bluff at the edge of the Village, toward the lee side of the island.

That, Levine suddenly realized, was where he would find Scopes.

He started down the trail, into the dark spruce forest. Levine noticed that the strange singing of the cyberspace world outside was gone, replaced by the island noises he remembered: the occasional cry of a gull, the distant sound of the ocean. As he moved deeper into the forest, the sound of the ocean disappeared, leaving only the wind sighing and moaning through the craggy branches of the spruce trees. Levine walked on as a light fog rolled in, amazed at how easily he was adjusting to moving around within this virtual world. The huge image before him on the elevator wall; the sounds and sights; the responsiveness of the program to his computer’s commands; all worked together toward a total suspension of disbelief.

The trail forked. Levine concentrated, trying to remember the way to the Village. In the end, he chose one fork at random.

The trail dipped down into a hollow and crossed a narrow brook, a blue thread bordered by pitcher plants and skunk cabbage. He crossed the stream, following the trail up a narrow ravine and deeper into the woods. Gradually, the trail petered out into nothingness. Levine turned around and began to retrace his steps, but the fog had grown thick, and all he could see were the black, lichen-covered trunks that surrounded him on all sides, marching into the mist. He was lost.

Levine thought for a moment. The Village, he knew, lay on the western side of the island. But which way was west?

He became aware of a shadow moving through the fog to his left; within moments, the shadow resolved itself into the shape of a man, holding a lantern at his side. As the man walked, the lantern made a yellow ring of light that bobbed and winked in the fog. Suddenly, the man stopped. He turned slowly, looking toward Levine through a defile of dark tree trunks. Levine looked back, wondering if he should type a greeting. There was a flash of light and a popping sound.

Levine realized he was being shot at. The figure in the fog was apparently some kind of security construct inside the cypherspace program. But how much could it see, and why was it firing at him?

Suddenly, a voice cut in, loud and insistent, over the soft sighing of the wind. Levine turned quickly, staring at the elevator speakers. The voice belonged to Brent Scopes.

“Attention, all security personnel. An intruder has been discovered in the GeneDyne computer. Under current network conditions, that means the intruder is also in the building. Locate and detain immediately.”

By entering the island world, he had alerted the GeneDyne supercomputer’s security program. But what would happen if he was hit with gunfire? Perhaps it would terminate the Cypherspace program, leaving him as far from Scopes as when he had first entered the building.

The dark figure fired again.

Levine fled backward into the woods. As he navigated through the swirling fingers of fog, he began to see more dark figures moving through the trees, and more flashes of light. The trees began to thin, and he came out at last onto a dirt road.

He stopped for a moment and looked around. The figures seemed to have vanished. Immediately, he started down the dirt road, moving as fast as his laptop controls would permit, alert for signs of anyone approaching.

A sudden noise alerted him, and he ducked back into the woods. Within moments, a group of shadowy ‘figures glided by, moving eastward like ghosts, holding lanterns and carrying guns. He waited until they passed, then returned to the road.

Soon, the road turned to stone and began to descend toward the sea. In the distance, Levine could now make out the scattered rooftops of the Village, crowded around the white spire of the church. Behind them rose the great mansard roof of the Island Inn.

Cautiously, he descended the hill and entered the town. The place appeared deserted. The fog was thicker between the weather-beaten houses, and he moved quickly past dark windows of old, rippled glass. Here and there a light in one of the houses cast a glow through the fog. Once he heard voices and managed to maneuver himself into an alley until a group of figures had moved past him in the fog.

Past the church, the road forked again. Now Levine knew where he was. Choosing the left fork, he followed the road as it climbed the side of a bluff. Then he stopped, maneuvering the trackball for a view up the hill.

There, at the top of the bluff, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, rose the gloomy outlines of the Scopes mansion.

The long hours of stooping and searching the lava for sign had taken their toll on Nye’s back. The horses had left barely enough marks to follow, and it was tedious, slow work. In three hours he had managed to track Carson and de Vaca less than two miles.

He straightened up, massaging his back, and took another small drink from the water bag. He poured a few quarts into his hat and let Muerto slurp it down. He would catch up to them eventually, if only to find their dead bodies being pulled apart by coyotes. He would outlast them.

He closed his eyes for a moment against the blazing white light of the sun. Then, with a deep sigh, he began again. There, two feet ahead, was a crushed clump of grass. He took one step and looked beyond it. There, maybe four feet ahead, was an overturned stone, showing a little sand on its bottom. He scanned a semicircle with his eyes. And there was the impression of the side of a hoof in a tiny patch of sand.

It was bloody tedious, to tell the truth. He occupied himself with the thought that, by now, Carson and de Vaca had no doubt drunk all their water. Their horses were probably half-crazed with thirst.

Here, at last, was a clear stretch of tracks, leading ahead for at least twenty feet. Nye straightened up and walked alongside them, grateful for the temporary respite. Maybe they’d grown tired of making their trail so difficult. He knew he bloody well had.

There was a sudden movement in the corner of his eye, and simultaneously Muerto reared, jerking Nye backward into the horse’s flailing hooves. There was a stunning blow to his head, followed by a strange noise that quickly died away, and an infinity of time passed. Then he found himself looking up at an endless field of blue. He sat up, feeling a wave of nausea. Muerto was twenty feet away, grazing peacefully. Automatically, his hand reached for his head. Blood. He looked at his watch, realized he’d only been unconscious for a minute or two.

He turned suddenly. Off to one side, a boy sat on a small rock, grinning, his knees sticking up under his chin. Wearing shorts, knee socks, and a battered blue blazer, the breast-pocket emblem of the St. Pancras’ School for Boys half-obscured by dirt. His longish hair was matted, as if it had been wet for a very long time, and it stuck out from the sides of his head.

“You,” Nye breathed.

“Rattler-snake,” the boy replied, nodding toward a clump of yucca.

That was the voice: supersaturated with the Cockney drawl that, Nye knew firsthand, years of English public school in Surrey or Kent could never fully exorcise. Hearing it from the mouth of this small figure, Nye was instantly transported from the fiery emptiness of the Southwestern desert to the narrow gray-brick streets of Haling, pavements slick with rain and the smell of coal hanging heavy in the air.

With an effort, he willed himself back to the present. He glanced in the direction the boy had pointed. There was the snake, still coiled in striking position, perhaps ten feet away.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nye said.

The boy laughed. “Didn’t see it, old man. Didn’t hear it, neither.”

The snake was silent. Its tail, sticking up at the end of its coil, was blurry with vibration, yet it was making no noise. Sometimes rattlers did break off all their rattles, but it was very rare. Nye could feel a prickle of secondary fear course through him. He had to be more careful.

Nye stood up, fighting to control the wave of nausea that washed over him as he rose. He went over to his horse and slid the rifle out of its scabbard.

“Hang on a minute,” the boy said, still grinning. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Nye slid the rifle back. It was true. Carson might hear the shot. That would give him information he didn’t need to know.

On a hunch, Nye scanned the ground in a wide arc around the snake. There it was: a green mesquite stick, recently whittled, forked at one end. And, lying beside it, a similar stick.

The boy stood up and stretched, smoothing down his unruly hair. “Looks like you were set up, bang to rights. Nasty bit of work. Almost did you, that one.”

Nye swore under his breath. He’d underestimated Carson at every turn. The snake had been agitated, and had struck too early. If it hadn’t... He felt a momentary dizziness.

He looked again at the boy. The last time he had seen him, Nye had been younger, not older, than the grubby little fellow that now stood before him. “What really happened, that day down in Littlehampton?” he asked. “Mum wouldn’t tell me.”

The boy’s lower lip stuck out in an exaggerated pout. “That dirty great wave got me, didn’t it? Pulled me right under.”

“So how did you swim back out?”

The pout deepened. “I didn’t.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Nye asked.

The boy picked up a pebble and threw it. “The same might be asked of yourself.”

Nye nodded. True enough. He supposed all this should seem strange to him. Yet each time he thought about it, it seemed more normal. Soon, he knew, he would stop thinking about it at all.

He collected the reins of the horse and gave the snake a wide berth, searching again for sign about thirty yards to the north.

“Hotter than a bleedin’ pan of bubble and squeak out here,” the boy said.

Nye ignored him. He had found a scrape on a stone. Carson must have made a sharp turn just beyond the snake. God, his head was throbbing.

“Here, I’ve got an idea,” the boy said. “Let’s head him off at the pass.”

Through a fog of pain, Nye remembered his maps. He wasn’t as familiar with the northern end of the Jornada desert as he was with the southern. It seemed unlikely, but he supposed it was possible there might be a way to head Carson off somewhere.

Certainly he still had the advantage. Eight gallons of water left, and his horse was going strong. It was time he stopped merely reacting to Carson’s stratagems, and began calling the shots himself.

Locating a flat area in the lava, Nye unrolled his maps, weighing down the corners with stones. Perhaps Carson had headed north for reasons other than simply throwing everyone off the scent. The personnel file stated that Carson had worked ranches in New Mexico. Maybe he was heading toward country he knew.

The maps showed large, complicated lava flows in the northern section of the Jornada. Since the topographical engineers hadn’t bothered to actually survey the flows, large sections of the maps were stippled indiscriminately with dots indicating lava. There was no section or range data. The maps were no doubt highly inaccurate, the data having been gathered from aerial photographs with no field checking.

At the northern end of the Jornada, Nye noticed a series of cinder cones marked “Chain of Craters” that ran in an irregular line across the desert. A lava mesa, the Mesa del Contadero, backed up against one side of the flow, and the tail end of the Fra Cristóbals blocked the flows at the other. It wasn’t a pass, exactly, but there was definitely a narrow gap in the Malpaís near the northern end of the Fra Cristóbals. From the map, it looked as if this gap was the only way to get out of the Jornada without crossing endless stretches of Malpaís.

The boy was leaning over Nye’s shoulder. “Cor! What’d I tell you, then, guv? Head him off at the pass.”

Twenty miles beyond the gap was the symbol for a windmill—a triangle topped with an X—and a black dot indicating a cattle tank. Next to them was a tiny black square, with the words “Lava Camp.” Nye could tell this was a line camp for a ranch headquartered another twenty miles north, marked “Diamond Bar” on the map.

That’s where Carson was going. The son of a bitch had probably worked on the ranch as a kid. Still, it was over a hundred miles from Mount Dragon to Lava Camp, and eighty miles to the narrow gap alone. That meant Carson still had almost sixty miles to go before hitting the windmill and water. No horse could go that distance without watering at least once. They were still doomed.

Nevertheless, the longer he looked at the map, the more certain Nye felt that Carson would be heading for that gap. He would stay on the lava only long enough to shake Nye, and then make a beeline for the gap, and for Lava Camp that lay beyond—where there would be water, food, and probably people, if not a cellular phone.

Nye returned the maps to their canisters and looked around. The lava seemed to stretch endlessly from horizon to horizon, but he knew now the western edge of the lava was only three-quarters of a mile away.

The plan that took shape in his mind was very simple. He would get off the lava immediately and ride ahead to that gap in the Malpaís. Once there, he’d wait. Carson couldn’t know that he had these maps. Sneak that he was, he probably knew Nye was unfamiliar with the northern Jornada. He would not expect to be cut off. And, in any case, he’d be too damn thirsty to worry about anything but finding water. Nye would have to ride in a long arc to ensure that Carson wouldn’t pick up his track, but with plenty of water and a strong horse he knew he could reach the gap long before Carson.

And that gap was where Carson and the bitch would meet their end in the crosshairs of his Holland &. Holland Express.

The vultures were perhaps a mile away now, still spiraling slowly in the rising thermal. Carson and de Vaca walked in silence, leading their horses across the lava. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The lava seemed to glitter with endless lakes of blue water, covered with whitecaps. It was impossible for Carson to keep his eyes open and not see water.

Carson examined his thirst. It was excruciating. He had never imagined, much less felt, such a desperate sensation. His tongue was a thick lump of chalk in his mouth, without feeling. His lips had cracked and were starting to ooze fluid. The thirst was also gnawing away at his mind: As he walked, it seemed the desert had become one vast fire, lifting him like flyaway ash into the dazzling, implacable sky.

The horses were becoming severely dehydrated. The alteration that a few hours in the noonday sun had worked on them was almost incredible. He had wanted to wait until sunset to give them water, but it was now clear that sunset would be too late.

He stopped abruptly. Susana shuffled on a few steps, then halted wordlessly.

“Let’s water the horses,” he said. The sudden speech in his dry throat was exquisitely painful.

She said nothing.

“Susana? You okay?”

De Vaca didn’t answer. She sat down in the shade of her horse and bowed her head.

Carson dismounted and moved toward de Vaca’s horse. He unstrapped Nye’s saddlebag and pushed the horseshoes aside. Removing a canteen, he took off his hat and filled it up to the brim. The sight of the water flowing from the mouth of the canteen sent his throat into spasm. Roscoe, who had been standing beside him half-dead, suddenly jerked his head up and crowded forward. He sucked down the water in a moment, then grabbed the hat with his teeth. Carson rapped him irritably on the muzzle, yanking the hat away. The horse pranced and blew.

Carson filled his hat a second time, carrying it to de Vaca’s horse. The horse drank it down greedily.

Replacing the now-empty canteen with the full one, he gave each horse half a second hatful, then returned the canteen to the saddle. The horses had suddenly become agitated, as he knew they would, and were blowing and turning, eyes wide.

As he returned the second, half-full canteen to the saddlebag, he heard a rustling sound. Reaching in, he found a loose seam along the lining of the outer flap. A piece of aged yellow paper was peeping out: the paper that Nye had been examining in the barn, the evening after the dust storm. Carson pulled it out and looked at it curiously. It was tattered and not paper at all, but something that looked like a soiled piece of ancient leather. On it were crudely detailed sketches of a mountain range, a strangely shaped black mass, numerous markings, and Spanish script. And across the top, the perplexing words in a large, old-fashioned hand: Al despertar la hora el áquila del sol se levanta en una aguja del fuego, “At dawn the eagle of the sun stands on a needle of fire.” And at the bottom, amid other Spanish script, a name: Diego de Mondragón.

It all became suddenly clear. Were it not for his painfully cracked lips, Carson would have laughed aloud.

“Susana!” he exclaimed. “Nye has been searching for the Mount Dragon treasure. The gold of Mondragón! I found a map” hidden here m his saddlebags. The crazy bastard knew paper was illegal at Mount Dragon, so he kept it where nobody would find it!”

De Vaca glanced at the proffered map disinterestedly from beneath the shade of her horse. Carson shook his head. It was ridiculous, so out of character. Whatever else he was, Nye was no fool. Yet he had no doubt bought this map in the back room of some musty junk shop in Santa Fe, probably paying a fortune. Carson had seen many such maps being offered for sale; faking and selling treasure maps for tourists was big business in New Mexico. No wonder Nye had acted so suspicious of Carson’s tracking: He thought Carson was out to steal his imaginary treasure.

Abruptly, Carson’s amusement disappeared. Apparently, Nye had been searching for this treasure for some time. Perhaps it had begun simply as curiosity on his part. But now, under the influence of PurBlood, what had started as a mild obsession would have become much more than that. And Nye, being aware that Carson had taken the saddlebag, would have even more reason to hunt them down without mercy.

He looked more closely at the map. It showed mountains, and the black stuff might be a lava flow. It could be anywhere in the desert. But Nye obviously knew that Mondragón’s doublet had supposedly been found at the base of Mount Dragon; he must have been orchestrating his search from that point.

Even this remarkable solution to Nye’s weekend disappearances grew quickly dull under the burning thirst that would not leave his throat. Wearily, Carson returned the piece of vellum to the saddlebag and looked at the horseshoes. There was no time to put them on. They’d have to chance it in the sand.

He tied up the saddlebag, then turned. “Susana, we’ve got to keep going.”

Wordlessly, de Vaca stood up and began walking northward. Carson followed her, his thoughts dissolving in a dark dream of fire.

Suddenly they were at the edge of the lava flow. Ahead of them, the sandy desert stretched to the limitless horizon. Carson bent down in a salt pan that had formed along the edge of the lava and picked up a few pieces of alkali salt. It never hurt to be prepared.

“We can ride now,” he said, shoving the salt into his pocket. He watched as de Vaca mechanically put one foot in the stirrup. She hoisted herself into the saddle on the second attempt.

Watching her silent struggles, Carson was suddenly unable to stand it any longer. He stopped, reached over for the saddlebag, withdrew the canteen.

“Susana. Drink with me.”

She sat on her horse for a moment, silently. At last, without looking up, she said, “Don’t be a fool. We’ve got sixty miles to go. Save it for the horses.”

“Just a little sip, Susana. A sip.”

A sob escaped from her throat. “None for me. But if you want to, go ahead.”

Carson screwed the cap down without drinking and replaced the canteen. As he prepared to mount, he felt something run down his chin. When he dabbed at his lips, his fingers came away red with blood. This hadn’t happened in Coal Canyon. This was much worse. And they still had sixty miles to go. He realized, with a kind of dull finality, that there was no way they were going to make it.

Unless there were coyotes at the kill.

He put his foot in the stirrup, fighting back a sudden dizziness, and pulled himself upward onto the horse. The effort exhausted him, and he sagged in the saddle.

The vultures were still circling now, perhaps a quarter mile ahead. The two moved closer, Carson propping himself up with the saddle horn. In the distance, something dark was lying on the sand. Coyotes were tugging at it. Roscoe, seeing something in the featureless desert, automatically moved toward it. Carson blinked, trying to focus. His eyes were running out of water. He blinked again.

The coyotes bounded away from the carcass. At a hundred yards they stopped and looked back. Never been shot at, Carson thought.

The horses drew closer to the carcass. Carson looked down, working to bring the dead creature into focus. His eyes were so dry they felt as if they were caked in sand.

It was a dead pronghorn antelope. The carcass was barely recognizable: a skull, with the characteristic stubby horns, peeking out of a desiccated lump of flesh.

Carson glanced at de Vaca, pulling up behind. “Coyotes,” he said. His throat felt like it had been flayed.

“What?”

“Coyotes. It means water. They never go far from water.”

“How far?”

“Ten miles, no more.”

He leaned over the saddle horn, trying to control a spasm in his throat.

“How?” de Vaca croaked.

“Track,” Carson said.

The heat played about them. A single cloud drifted across the sky, like a puff of acrid steam. The Fra Cristóbal Mountains, which they had been approaching all day, now seemed bleached to bone by the sun. Behind them, the horizon had disappeared, and the landscape itself seemed to be evaporating, dissolving into sheets of light, floating upward into a white-hot sky. The coyotes were sitting on a rise, waiting for the interlopers to leave.

“They approached from downwind,” Carson said.

He rode in a spiral away from the dead antelope until he located the spot where the coyote tracks entered. As he followed the tracks away from the antelope, de Vaca drew up alongside. They rode for several miles, Carson leading, following the faint tracks through the soft desert sand.

Then the tracks veered into the lava and disappeared.

Carson drew Roscoe to a halt as de Vaca came along beside him. There was a silence. Nobody could track a coyote through lava.

“I think,” he croaked at last, “that we need to divide the remaining water with the horses. We can’t last much longer.”

This time de Vaca nodded.

They slid off the horses, collapsing in the hot sand. Carson removed the half-full canteen with a weak hand.

“Drink slowly,” Carson said. “And don’t be disappointed if it makes you even more thirsty.”

De Vaca sipped from the canteen with trembling hands. Carson didn’t bother to bring out the salt from his pocket; they wouldn’t be drinking enough water for it to matter. Taking the canteen gently from de Vaca, he raised it to his lips. The feeling was unbearably good, but it was even more unbearable when it ended.

He gave what was left to the horses, then tied the empty canteen on the saddle horn. They lay down in the shade cast by the two animals, who stood dejectedly in the afternoon sun.

“What are we waiting for?” de Vaca asked.

“Sunset,” said Carson. The drink already seemed a wonderful, unbearable dream. But talking was not the unbearable torture it had been. “Coyotes water at sunset, and they usually start calling. Let’s hope the spring is within a mile, so we can hear them. Otherwise. ...”

“What about Nye?”

“He’s still searching for us, I’m sure of that,” Carson said. “But I think we’ve lost him.”

De Vaca was silent. “I wonder if Don Alonso and his wife suffered like this,” she murmured at last.

“Probably. But they found a spring.”

They lapsed into silence. The desert was deathly quiet.

“Is there anything else you can remember about that spring?” Carson asked at last.

De Vaca frowned. “No. They started across the desert at dusk, and drove their stock until they were near to collapse. An Apache showed them the spring.”

“So they were probably about halfway across.”

“They started with barrels of water in their wagons, so they were probably much farther than that.”

“Going north,” said Carson.

“Going north.”

“You remember anything, anything at all, about the location?”

“I already told you. It was in a cave at the foot of the Fra Cristóbals. That’s all I can remember.”

Carson did a quick calculation. They were now about forty-five miles north of Mount Dragon. The mountains were ten miles to the west. Just at the edge of the coyotes’ range.

Carson struggled to his feet. “The wind is drifting toward the Fra Cristóbals. So the coyotes probably came from the west. So maybe—just maybe—the Ojo del Águila is at the foot of the mountains due west.”

“That was a long time ago,” de Vaca said. “How do you know that, even if we find it, the spring hasn’t run dry?”

“I don’t.”

“I’m not sure if I can make it ten miles.”

“It’s either that, or die.”

“You’ve got a great bedside manner, you know that?” De Vaca pushed herself into a sitting position. “Let’s go.”

Nye trotted alongside the lava flow for a while and then looped eastward, away from the mountains, to ensure that the two would not cross his trail. Although Carson had proven a worthy adversary, he tended to make mistakes when he was overconfident. Nye wanted to make sure Carson was as overconfident as possible. He had to make Carson believe he had thrown him off the trail.

Muerto was still going strong, and Nye himself felt good. The pain in his head had subsided to a dull ache. The afternoon heat was stifling, but it was their friend, the invisible killer.

Toward four o’clock he cut north again, returning to the edge of the lava flow. To the south, he could see a column of vultures. They had been hanging there for quite a while. Some animal or other. Far too soon for Carson and de Vaca to draw so big a crowd.

He stopped suddenly. The boy had vanished. He felt a panic.

“Hey, boy!” he called. “Boy!”

His voice died away without echo, sucked into the dry sands of the desert. There was little in the endless dead landscape to reflect sound.

He stood in his stirrups and cupped his hands. “Boy!”

The scruffy figure came out from behind a low rock, buttoning his fly. “Here, put a sock in your boatrace. I was just visiting the gents’.”

Relaxing, Nye turned his horse, bringing him quickly back to a trot. Thirty miles to the ambush point. He would be there before midnight.

The image on the huge screen was of a rambling Victorian house in pure Gothic Revival style, bedecked almost self-consciously with ponderous mansard roof and widow’s walk. A white portico ran across the front of the house and along both sides. Panning his view upward, Levine noticed that the entire structure was dark, save for a small, eight-sided garret atop the central tower, its oculus windows piercing the fog with a yellow glow.

He maneuvered his cyberspatial self up the road to an iron gate that hung open on broken hinges, wondering why the house itself wasn’t guarded; why Scopes had depicted the yard as being overgrown with chokecherries and burdock. As he approached, he noticed that several of the windows were broken and that paint was peeling from the weathered clapboards. The house and yard had been lovingly tended the summer he’d spent there as a youth.

He looked up again at the octagonal garret. If Scopes was anywhere inside, he would be there. Levine watched as a stream of colored light, like a tongue of fire, burst from the roof of the garret and disappeared into a dark hole in the fog that hovered overhead. He’d seen similar data transfers flashing between the huge buildings he’d first encountered in GeneDyne cyberspace. This must be the encrypted TELINT satellite uplink that Mime had detected. Levine wondered if the messages were encrypted before or after they left this inner sanctum of Scopes’s cypherspace.

The front door stood partly open. The interior of the house was dim, and Levine found himself wishing for some way to illuminate the view. The sky had slowly darkened, turning the fog to a leaden gray, and Levine realized that—at least within this artificial world of Scopes’s—night was coming on. He looked at his watch and saw it was 5:22. A.M. or P.M.? he found himself wondering. He had lost all track of time. He shifted position on the elevator floor, flexing one leg that had gone to sleep and massaging his tired wrists, wondering if Mime was still somewhere in the GeneDyne network, running interference. Then, taking a deep breath, he returned his hands to the laptop keys and moved forward into the house.

Here was the large parlor of his memory, with a worn Persian rug on the floor and a massive stone fireplace on the left-hand wall. A stuffed moose head hung above it, cobwebs woven thickly between its antlers. The walls were lined with old paintings of barques and schooners, and scenes of whaling. and fishing.

Straight ahead was the curving staircase that mounted to the second floor. He maneuvered up the staircase and along the second-floor balustrade. The rooms off the balustrade were dark and empty. He chose one at random, maneuvering through it to a worn and battered window. He looked outside and was surprised to see not the narrow road winding down into the mist, but a bizarre jumble of gray and orange static. A bug in cypherspace? Levine wondered, moving back to the balustrade through the dim light. He turned in to a second hallway, curious to see the room he’d slept in that summer so many years before, but a burst of computer code filled the screen, threatening to dissolve the entire vast image of the house before him. He hurriedly backed away, perplexed. Every other area of the island seemed to have been knit together by Scopes with such care. Yet the re-creation of his own childhood home was disheveled and empty, with rends in the very fabric of his computerized creation.

At the far end of the balustrade was the door to the garret stairs. Levine was about to ascend the stairs when he remembered a back staircase that led to the widow’s walk. Perhaps it would be better if he took a look into the windows of the garret before broaching it directly.

Fog rushed up to embrace him as Levine moved forward onto the widow’s walk. He swiveled the laptop’s trackball:, looking around cautiously. Ten feet ahead of him, the angular form of the garret jutted from the walkway. Levine moved forward and peered into the oculus window.

A bent-looking figure sat inside the garret, his back to Levine. Long white hair flowed over the high collar of what appeared to be a dressing gown. The figure was perched in front of a computer terminal. Suddenly, a tongue of fire came shooting down out of the fog, plunging into the side of the garret. Without hesitation, Levine moved forward into the stream of color, and in an instant words were flashing across the enormous screen:

... have discussed your price. It is outrageous. Our offer of three billion stands. There will be no further negotiation.

The stream subsided. Levine waited, motionless. Within minutes, a burst of colored light shot up from the tower:

General Harrington: Your impertinence just cost you an additional billion, and the price is now five billion. This kind of posturing is displeasing to me as a businessman. It would be much nicer if we could settle this like gentlemen, don’t you think? And it isn’t even your money. It is, however, my virus. I have it, and you don’t. Five billion would reverse that situation.

The stream subsided.

Levine stood on the widow’s walk, stunned. It was worse than he could ever have imagined. Not only was Scopes mad, but he had in his possession a virus—a virus he was selling to the military. Perhaps even to rogue elements within the military. Judging by the prices involved, the virus could only be the doomsday virus Carson had told him about.

Levine sagged back against the elevator wall, overwhelmed by the enormity of what he was up against. Five billion dollars. It was staggering. A virus wasn’t like a nuclear weapon— hard to transport, difficult to hide, hard to deliver. A single test tube in someone’s pocket could easily contain trillions of them. ...

Sitting up again, Levine maneuvered himself back along the widow’s walk, down the flight of stairs, and along the corridor to the garret stairway. As with all unlocked doors in Scopes’s creation, the garret doorway opened as he collided with it. At the top of the dark stairway was another door. As he ascended, Levine could see light coming from the jamb.

This door was locked. Levine banged into it again and again in frustration and rage.

Then something occurred to him. It had worked with Phido; there was no reason to think it wouldn’t work here.

In capital letters, he typed: SCOPES!

Instantly, the name reverberated from the speaker into the narrow confines of the elevator. A minute ticked by, then two. Suddenly, the door to the garret room burst open. Levine could see a wizened figure looking out at him. What he had taken to be a dressing gown was actually a long robe, sprinkled liberally with astrological designs. Hair fell in streams of white and silver over the jug ears, and the skin that lay across the forehead and along the sunken cheeks was lined with an infinity of wrinkles, but Levine knew the face, as he knew few others. He had found Brent Scopes.

The sun felt brittle, like a rainfall of glass. The water had restored a little moisture to their throats, yet it had only intensified their thirst. And it had made the horses unruly. Beneath him, Carson could sense that Roscoe was panicking, preparing to run. Once that happened, he’d run until he died.

“Keep them on a short rein,” he said.

The Fra Cristóbals loomed ever larger, turning from orange to gray to red in the changing light. As they rode, Carson could feel the terrible dryness returning to his mouth and throat. As his eyes grew more inflamed, it became too painful to keep them open for more than a few moments at a time. He rode with his eyes closed. Beneath him, he could feel the horse swaying with weakness.

A cave at the foot of the mountains. Warm water. That meant a volcanic area. So the spring would be near a lava flow, and the cave itself was probably a lava tube. He opened his eyes for a moment. Eight more miles, perhaps less, to the silent, lifeless mountains.

The effort of thinking exhausted him. Suddenly, he dropped the reins and then, disoriented, pawed frantically at the saddle horn with both hands. If he fell off the horse, he knew he would never get back on. He gripped the horn tighter and leaned forward until he could feel the coarse hair of the horse’s mane on his cheek. If Roscoe decided to run, so be it. He rested there, releasing himself to the reddish light that burned behind his closed eyelids.

The sun was setting as they reached the base of the mountains. The long shadow of the rough peaks crept toward them, engulfing them at last in sweet shadow. The temperature dropped out of triple digits.

Carson forced his eyes open. Roscoe was staggering. The horse had lost all desire to run, and was now losing the simple desire to live. Carson turned toward de Vaca. Her back was bowed, her head down, her whole frame seemingly crooked and broken.

The two horses, which had been shambling ahead at their own pace, reached a line of lava at the base of the mountains and stopped.

“Susana?” Carson croaked.

She lifted her head slightly.

“Let’s wait here. Wait to hear the coyotes calling to water.”

She nodded and slid off the horse. She tried to stand but collapsed drunkenly to her knees.

“Shit,” she said, grabbing the stirrup and pulling herself partway up before crumpling back into the sand. Her horse stood on trembling legs, its head drooping.

“Wait, I’ll help you,” said Carson. As he dismounted, he, too, felt himself lose his balance. With a kind of mild surprise, he found himself looking up from the soft sand at a spinning world: mountains, horses, sunset sky. He closed his eyes again.

Suddenly it was cool. He tried to open his eyes but found himself unable to separate the glued lashes. He reached up with a hand and prized apart the lid of one eye. There was a single star above, shining in a deep ultraviolet sky. Then he heard a faint sound. It started as a sharp yipping noise, rising in pitch, answered at a distance. Three or four more yips followed, the final cry dropping suddenly into a long, drawn-out howl. There was an answering call, then another. The calls appeared to be converging.

Coyotes going to water. At the base of the mountains.

Carson lifted his head. The still form of de Vaca was stretched on the sand near him. There was just enough light in the sky to see the dim outlines of her body.

“Susana?”

There was no answer.

He crawled over and touched her shoulder. “Susana?” Please answer. Please don’t be dead.

He shook her again, a little harder. Her head lolled slightly, black hair spilling across her face.

“Help,” she croaked. “Me.”

The sound of her voice revived a weak current of strength within him. He had to find water. Somehow, he had to save her life. The horses were still standing quietly, reins in the sand, shaking as if with fever. He clung to a stirrup and pulled himself into a sitting position. Roscoe’s flank felt very hot beneath his hand.

As Carson stood, a sudden wave of dizziness engulfed him and the strength drained out of his legs. Then he found himself flat on his back again, in the sand.

He was unable to walk. If he was going to reach water, he’d have to ride to it.

He grabbed the stirrup again and pulled himself up, clinging desperately to the saddle horn. He was far too weak to pull himself into the saddle. He looked around with his single usable eye. A few yards off, he spotted a large rock. Hooking his arm through the stirrup, Carson led the horse to the rock, then clambered onto it. From its top he was able to crawl into the saddle. Then he sat, listening.

The coyotes were still calling. He took a bearing toward the sound and tapped Roscoe with his heels.

The animal lurched forward, took a trembling step, then stopped, spraddle-legged. Carson whispered into the horse’s ear, patted him soothingly on the neck, and nudged him again. Come on, damn you.

The horse took another shaky step forward. He stumbled, recovered with a grunt, and took a third step.

“Hurry,” Carson whispered urgently. The calling would not last long.

The horse staggered toward the sound. In a minute, another wall of lava loomed up on his left. He urged Roscoe on as the yelping suddenly ceased.

The coyotes were aware of his presence.

He kept moving the horse toward the place where he’d last heard the sound. More lava. The light was draining out of the sky. Within minutes it would be too dark to see.

Suddenly he smelled it: a cool, humid fragrance. The horse jerked his head up, smelling it too. In a moment the faint breeze had carried the smell away again, and the hot brick stench of the desert returned to fill his nostrils.

The lava flow seemed to march on endlessly to his left, while to his right lay the empty desert. As night came on, more stars began to appear in the sky. The silence was intense. There was no indication where the water might be. They were close, but not close enough. He felt himself slipping into unconsciousness.

The horse sighed heavily and took another step forward. Carson gripped the saddle horn. He had dropped the reins again, but he didn’t care. Let the horse have his head. There it was: another tantalizing breeze, carrying with it the smell of wet sand. The horse turned toward the smell, walking straight into the lava. Carson could see nothing but the black outline of twisted rock, rearing against a fading sky. There was nothing here, after all; it was just another cruel mirage. He closed his eyes again. The horse staggered, took a few more steps. Then it stopped.

Carson heard, as if from a great distance, the sound of water being sucked up through a bitted muzzle. He released his grip on the saddle horn and felt himself falling, and still falling, and just when it seemed like he would fall forever he landed with a splash in a shallow pool.

He was lying in water perhaps four inches deep. It was, of course, a hallucination; people who were dying of thirst often felt themselves sinking into water. As he turned, water filled his mouth. He coughed and swallowed. It was warm—warm and clean. He swallowed again. And then he realized that it was real.

He rolled in the water, drinking, laughing and rolling, and drinking some more. As the lovely warm liquid coursed down his throat, he could feel the strength beginning to return to his limbs.

He willed himself to stop drinking and stood up, steadying himself against the horse and blinking both eyes free of the glue that had imprisoned them. He untied the canteen and, with a shaking hand, filled it in the warm water. Returning the canteen to the saddle horn, he tried to pull Roscoe away.

The horse refused to budge. Carson knew that, if left to his own devices, the animal, might very well drink himself to death, or at the very least give himself founder. He whacked Roscoe on the muzzle and jerked up the reins. The horse, startled, spun backward.

“It’s for your own good,” Carson said, leading the animal out while he pranced in frustration.

He found de Vaca lying just as he left her. Kneeling beside her, Carson opened the canteen and dabbed a little water over her face and hair. She stirred, rolling her head, and he cradled it in his arms, carefully pouring a few drops into her open mouth.

“Susana?”

She swallowed and coughed.

He poured another drop into her mouth, and dabbed some more on her crusted eyes and swollen lips.

“Is that you, Guy?” she whispered.

“There’s water.”

He placed the canteen to her lips. She took a few swallows and coughed.

“More,” she croaked.

Over the next fifteen minutes, she drank the entire gallon in little sips.

Carson pulled the piece of alkali salt from his pocket, sucked on it for a moment, then passed it to her. “Lick some of this,” he said. “It’ll help take away the thirst.”

“Am I dead?” she whispered at last.

“No. I found the spring. Actually, Roscoe found it. The Ojo del Águila.”

She sucked on the piece of salt, then sat up weakly. “Whew. I’m still dying of thirst.”

“You’ve got enough water in your stomach for now. What you need is electrolytes.”

She sucked on the salt again; then a sob suddenly racked her shoulders. Instinctively, Carson put his arms around her.

“Hey,” she said, “look at this, cabrón. My eyes are working again.”

He held her, feeling the tears trickle down his own face. Together, they wept at the miracle that had kept them alive.

Within an hour, de Vaca was strong enough to move. They led the horses back to the cave and let them drink, slowly. After the horses had watered, Carson took them outside to graze, first hobbling them to keep them from wandering away in the dark. It hardly seemed necessary, since they weren’t likely to stray far from the water.

When he returned to the darkness of the cave, Carson found de Vaca lying on a verge of sand next to the spring, already asleep. He sat down, feeling an immense mantle of weariness settle on his shoulders. He was too tired to explore. The world drained away into nothingness as he fell back against the sand.

Lava Gate.

Nye played his halogen torch along the immense black wall that reared up beside him. The gap was perhaps a hundred yards wide. On one side the Fra Cristóbal mountains thrust up from the desert floor, a talus of fractured boulders and traprock forming a natural barrier to horses. On the other, an immense wall of lava rose up, the abrupt end of many miles of frozen flow from a volcano whose spark had gone out eons before. It was even better than he imagined; a perfect place for an ambush. If he was heading for Lava Camp, Carson had no choice but to go through here.

Nye hobbled Muerto in a hidden arroyo beyond the gap and climbed up into the lava, carrying his flashlight and rifle, a water bag, and food. He soon found what seemed in the darkness to be a good lookout: a small depression in the lava, surrounded by a jagged escarpment. The lava had formed itself into natural crenellations, and its rough porous surface offered excellent purchase for the barrel of his rifle.

He settled down to wait. He took a sip from the water bag and pared himself a hunk of cheese from the wheel. American cheddar, truly awful stuff. And the 110-degree heat hadn’t improved it. But at least it was food. Nye was fairly confident that Carson and the woman hadn’t eaten in thirty hours. But without water, food would be the least of their problems.

He sat quietly in the darkness, listening. Toward dawn the new moon rose, a bright white sliver. It threw enough light in the clear air for Nye to relax his vigil and look around.

He had found the ideal lookout: a sniper’s nest a hundred feet above the gap. By day, Carson and the woman would be visible to the south for two, maybe three miles. He had clear shooting across, down, and even to the other side. He couldn’t have designed a better blind. Here, he’d have all the time in the world to squeeze off his shots. When the .357 nitro-express slugs connected with human tissue, they would cause so much havoc even the buzzards would have a difficult time finding enough meat for a meal.

Chances were, of course, that Carson and the woman were already dead. If that was the case, it would be some consolation to Nye to know it was his presence that had flushed them out, forcing them to travel during the merciless heat of the day. But whatever the case, this was a comfortable spot to wait. Now that he could remain hidden during the daylight hours, water would not be such an issue. He’d stay here another day, maybe two—just to be sure—before heading south in search of the bodies.

If Carson had found water—which was the only way he would make it this far—he would be overconfident. Buoyant. Thinking he’d shaken Nye for good. Nye popped the magazine out, checked it, and slid it back in.

“Bang, bang,” came the high, giggling voice out of the darkness to his left.

A faint blueness began to creep into the eastern sky.

“Who is that?” Levine heard Scopes’s voice come sharply out of the elevator speakers. The lips of the wizard-image on the screen did not move, and its expression did not change, yet Levine could hear the mild surprise in the voice of his ex-friend. He did not type a response.

“So it wasn’t a false alarm, after all.” The wizard-image stepped away from the door. “Come in, please. I’m sorry I can’t offer you a seat. Perhaps in the next release.” He laughed. “Are you a rogue employee? Or are you working for an outside competitor? Whatever the case, perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain your presence in my building and in my program.”

Levine paused. Then he transferred his hands from the trackball and cursor keys to the laptop’s keyboard. “I’m Charles Levine,” he typed.

The wizard stared back for several seconds. “I don’t believe you,” came the voice of Scopes at last. “You couldn’t possibly have hacked your way in here.”

“But I did. And I’m here¡ inside your own program, Cypherspace.”

“So you weren’t content playing at corporate espionage from a distance, Charles?” Scopes asked in a mocking tone. “You had to add breaking and entering to your growing list of felonies.”

Levine hesitated. He was not yet sure of Scopes’s mental condition, but he felt he had no recourse but to speak openly. “I have to talk to you,” he typed. “About what it is you’re planning to do.”

“And what is that?”

“Sell the doomsday virus to the United States military for five billion dollars.”

There was a long pause.

“Charles, I’ve underestimated you. So you know about X-FLU II. Very good.”

So that’s what it’s called, Levine thought. “What do you hope to accomplish by selling this virus?” he typed.

“I thought that would have been obvious. Five billion dollars.”

“Five billion isn’t going to do you much good if the fools who end up with your creation destroy the entire world.”

“Charles, please. They already have the ability to end the world. And they haven’t done it. I understand these fellows. These are the same bullies who beat us up on the playground thirty years ago. Basically, I’m just aiding them in their desire to have the biggest, newest weapon. It’s an evolutionary artifact, this wanting of big weapons. They’ll never actually use the virus. Just like nuclear weapons, it has no military value, just strategic value in the balance of power equation. This virus was developed as a by-product of a legitimate Pentagon contract with GeneDyne. I’ve done nothing illegal or even unethical in developing this virus and offering it for sale.”

“It amazes me how you can rationalize your greed,” Levine typed.

“I’m not through. There are good, sensible reasons why the American military should have this virus. There can be little doubt that the existence of nuclear weapons prevented World War Three between the former Soviet Union and the United States. We finally did what Nobel hoped to do with dynamite; we made all-out war unthinkable. But now we have come to the next generation of weapons: biological hot agents. Despite treaties to the contrary, many unfriendly governments are working on biological agents just like this. If the balance of power is to be maintained, we cannot afford to be without our own. If we’re caught without a virus such as X-FLU II, any number of hostile countries could blackmail us, threaten us and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, we have a president who actually intends to obey the Biological Weapons Convention. We’re probably the only major country in the world still observing it! But this is a waste of time. I wasn’t able to convince you to join me in founding GeneDyne, and I won’t be able to convince you now. It’s a pity, really; we could have done great things together. But you chose, out of resentment, to devote your life to destroying mine. You’ve never been able to forgive me for winning the Game.”

“Great things, you say. Like inventing a doomsday virus to wipe out the entire population of the world?”

“Perhaps you know less than you let on. This so-called doomsday virus is a by-product of a germ-line therapy that will rid the human race of the flu. Forever. An immunization that will confer lasting immunity to influenza.”

“You call being dead immunity?”

“It should be obvious even to you that X-FLU II was an intermediate step. It had flaws, true. But I’ve found a way to make those very flaws marketable.”

The figure went over to a cabinet and removed a small object from one of the shelves. As the figure turned back, Levine saw it was a gun, similar in design to those used by his pursuers in the woods.

“What are you going to do?” Levine asked. “You can’t shoot me. This is cyberspace.”

Scopes laughed. “We shall see. But I won’t do it quite yet. First, I want you to tell me what really brings you here into my private world at such personal inconvenience. If you wanted to speak to me about X-FLU II, surely you could have found an easier way to do it.”

“I came to tell you that PurBlood is poisonous.”

The Scopes-wizard lowered the gun. “That is interesting. How so?”

“I don’t know the details yet. It breaks down in the body and starts poisoning the mind. It’s what drove Franklin Burt insane. It’s what drove your scientist, Vanderwagon, insane. It will drive all the beta-testers at Mount Dragon insane. And it’s what’s driving you insane.”

It was unsettling, speaking to the computerized image of Scopes. It did not smile, it did not frown; until Scopes’s own voice came over the speaker, Levine had no way of knowing what the GeneDyne CEO was thinking, or what the effect of his own words might be. He wondered if Scopes already knew; if he had read and believed Carson’s aborted transmission.

“Very good, Charles,” came the reply at last, laced with weary irony. “I knew you were in the business of making outrageous claims against GeneDyne, but this is your grandest achievement.”

“It’s no claim. It’s true.”

“And yet you have no proof, no evidence, and no scientific explanation. It’s like all your other charges against GeneDyne. PurBlood was developed by the most brilliant geneticists in the world. It has been thoroughly tested. And when it’s released this Friday, it will save countless lives.”

“Destroy countless lives, more likely. And you aren’t the slightest bit worried, having taken PurBlood yourself?”

“You seem to know a lot about my activities. I never was transfused with PurBlood, however. I took colored plasma.”

Levine did not reply for a moment. “And yet you let the rest of Mount Dragon take the real stuff. How courageous of you.”

“I had planned on taking it, actually, but my stalwart assistant, Mr. Fairley, prevailed on my better judgment. Besides, the Mount Dragon staff developed it. Who better to test it?”

Levine sat back helplessly. How could he have forgotten, in his haste to confront Scopes directly, what the man was like? The discussion reminded him of their college arguments. Back then, he had never succeeded in changing Scopes’s opinion on any subject. How could he possibly succeed now, when so much more was at stake?

There was a long silence. Levine maneuvered his view around the garret and noticed that the fog had cleared. He moved to the window. It was now dark, and a full moon was shimmering off the surface of the ocean like a skein of silk. A dragger, nets hung, chugged toward the harbor. Now that the conversation had lapsed into silence, Levine thought he could detect the sound of the surf on the rocks below. Pemaquid Point Light winked in the darkness.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Scopes said. “It captures everything but the smell of the sea.”

Levine felt a deep sadness steal over him. It was a perfect illustration of the contradictions in Scopes’s character. Only a genius of immense creativity could have written a program this beautiful and subtle. And yet the same person was planning to sell X-FLU II. Levine watched the boat glide into the harbor, its running lights dancing on the water. A dark figure leapt off the boat and caught the hawsers as they were thrown from the deck, looping them over cleats.

“Originally, it began as a set of separate challenges,” Scopes said. “My network was growing daily, and I felt I was losing control. I wanted a way to traverse it, easily and privately. I had spent a fair amount of time playing with artificial-intelligence languages, like LISP, and object-oriented languages such as Smalltalk. I felt there was a need for a new kind of computer language that could meld the best of both, with something else added, too. When those languages were developed, computer horsepower was minuscule. I realized I now had the processing capability to play with images as well as words. So I built my language around visual constructs. The Cypherspace compiler creates worlds, not just programs. It began simply enough. But soon, I realized the possibilities of my new medium. I felt I could create an entirely new art form, unique to the computer, meant to be experienced on its own terms. It’s taken me years to create this world, and I’m still working on it. It’ll never be finished, of course. But much of that time was spent in development, in making the programming language and tools sufficiently robust. I could do it again much more quickly, now.

“Charles, you could stand at that window for a week and never see the same thing twice. If you wished, you could go down to the dock and talk to those men. The tide goes in and out with the phases of the moon. There are seasons. There are people living in the houses: fishermen, summer people, artists. Real people, people I remember from my childhood. There’s Marvin Clark, who runs the local store. He died a few years back but he lives on in my program. Tomorrow, you could go down there and listen to him telling stories. You could have a cup of tea and play backgammon with Hank Hitchins. Each person is a self-contained object within the larger program. They exist independently and interact with each other in ways that I never programmed or even foresaw. Here, I’m a kind of god: I’ve created a world, but now that it’s created, it goes on without further input from me.”

“But you’re a selfish god,” Levine said. “You’ve kept this world to yourself.”

“True enough. I simply don’t feel like sharing it. It’s too personal.”

Levine turned back to the wizard-image. “You’ve reproduced the island in perfect detail, except your own house. It’s in ruins. Why?”

The figure was still a moment, and no sound came through the elevator speaker. Levine wondered what nerve he had touched. Then the figure raised the gun again. “I think we’ve spoken enough now, Charles,” Scopes said.

“I’m not impressed by the gun.”

“You should be. You are simply a process within the matrix of my program. If I shoot, the thread of your process will halt. You will be stuck, with no way to communicate with me or anyone else. But it’s largely academic now. While we were chatting about my creation, I sent a sniffer routine back over your trail, tracking you across the network backbone until I located your terminal. It can’t be too comfortable, stuck there in Elevator Forty-nine between the seventh and eighth floors. A welcoming party is already on its way, so you might as well sit tight.”

“What are you going to do?” Levine asked.

“Me? I’m not going to do anything. You, however, are going to die. Your arrogant break-in, along with this latest round of snooping into my business, really leaves me little choice. As an intruder, of course, your killing will be justifiable homicide. I’m sorry, Charles, I truly am. It didn’t need to end this way.”

Levine raised his fingers to type a reply, then stopped. There was nothing he could say.

“Now I’m going to terminate the program. Good-bye, Charles.”

The figure took careful aim.

For the first time since entering the GeneDyne building, Levine was afraid.

Carson woke with a start. It was still dark, but dawn was approaching: As he looked out, he could see the sky beginning to separate itself from the black mouth of the cave. A few yards away, Susana was still asleep on the sand. He could hear the soft, regular sound of her breathing.

He propped himself up on one elbow, aware of a dull nagging thirst. Crawling on hands and knees to the edge of the spring, he cupped the warm water in his hands, drinking it greedily. As the thirst died, a gnawing hunger began to assert itself in the depths of his belly.

Standing, he walked to the mouth of the cave and breathed the cool, predawn air. The horses were a few hundred yards off, grazing quietly. He whistled softly and they lifted their heads, perking their ears at his presence. He walked toward them, stepping carefully in the darkness. They were a little gaunt, but otherwise seemed to have survived their ordeal quite well. He stroked Roscoe’s neck. The horse’s eyes were bright and clear, a good sign. He bent down and felt the coronet at the top of the hoof. It was warm but not hot, showing no sign of laminitis.

He looked around in the gathering light. The surrounding mountains were carved from tilted sandstone, their sedimentary layers running at crazy diagonals through the eroded humps and canyons. As he watched, their summits became infused with the scarlet light of the rising sun. There was a stillness to the air almost religious in its force: the silence of a cathedral before the organ sounds. Where the muscled flanks of the mountains sank into the desert, the skirts of the lava flow cloaked their base in a black, jagged mass. Their own cave was hidden from view, below the level of the desert. Standing one hundred yards from it, Carson would never have dreamed there was anything around but black lava. There was no sign of Nye.

Carson watered the horses again in the cave and then hobbled them in a fresh patch of tobosa grass. Then, locating a mesquite bush, he used his spearpoint to cut off a long flexible sucker, with a cluster of stobs and thorns at the end. He walked out of the lava and into the desert, examining the sand carefully as he went. Soon, he found what he was looking for: the tracks of a rabbit, still young and relatively small. He followed them for a hundred yards until they disappeared into a hole underneath a Mormon-tea bush. Squatting down, he shoved the thorny end of the stick down the hole, threading it through several turns, and—when it reached the den— prodding and twisting, feeling a furry resistance. Twisting more vigorously now, he slowly pulled the stick back out of the hole. A young rabbit, whose loose skin had been caught and twisted up in the stobs, struggled and grunted. Carson pinned it with his foot and cut off its head, letting the blood drain into the sand. Then he gutted, skinned, and spitted it, buried the offal in the sand to deter buzzards, and returned to the cave.

De Vaca was still sleeping. At the mouth of the cave he built a small fire, rubbed the rabbit with more alkali salt from his pocket, and began roasting it. The meat spit and sizzled, the blue smoke drifting into the clear air.

Now at last the sun came above the horizon, throwing a brilliant shower of golden light across the desert floor and deep into the cave, illuminating its dark surfaces. There was a noise and Carson turned to see de Vaca, sitting up at last and rubbing her eyes sleepily.

“Ouch,” she said as the golden light flared in her face and turned her black hair to bronze.

Carson watched her with the smugly virtuous smile of an early riser. His eyes strayed from her to the interior of the cave. De Vaca, seeing his expression change, turned to follow his gaze.

The rising sun was shining through a crack in the cave opening, striping a needle of orange light across the floor of the cave and halfway up its rear wall. Balanced atop the needle and illuminated against the rough rock was a jagged, yet immediately recognizable image: an eagle, wings spread and head upraised as if about to burst into flight.

They watched in silence as the image grew brighter, until it seemed it would be forever branded into the rear of the cave. And then, as suddenly as it had flared up, it died away; the sun rose above the mouth of the cave, and the eagle vanished into the growing superfluity of light.

“El Ojo del Águila,” De Vaca said. “The Spring of the Eagle. Now we know we found it. Incredible to think that this same spring saved my ancestors’ lives four hundred years ago.”

“And now it’s saving ours,” Carson murmured. He continued to stare at the dark space where the image had been for a moment, as if trying to recall a thought that was dancing just beyond the verge of consciousness. Then the wonderful aroma of roasting meat filled his nostrils, and he turned back to the rabbit.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“You’re damn right. What is it?”

“Rabbit.” He turned it, then pulled it from the fire and stuck the spit upright in the sand. Taking out the spearpoint, he sliced off a haunch and handed it to de Vaca.

“Careful, it’s hot.”

Gingerly, she took a bite.

“Delicious. You can cook, too. I assumed all you cowboys knew how to make was beans in bacon fat.”

She sank her teeth into the haunch, peeling off another piece of meat. “And it’s not even tough, like the rabbits my grandfather used to bring home.” She spat out a small bone. Carson watched her eat with a cook’s secret pride.

In ten minutes the rabbit was gone and the cleaned bones burning, in the fire, De Vaca sat back, licking her fingers. “How’d you catch that rabbit?” she asked.

Carson shrugged. “Just something I picked up on the ranch as a kid.”

De Vaca nodded. Then she smiled wickedly. “That’s right, I forgot. All Indians know how to hunt. It’s an instinct, right?”

Carson frowned, his complacence dissolving under this unwarranted dig. “Give it a rest,” he grumbled. “It wasn’t funny the first time, and it certainly isn’t funny now.”

But de Vaca was still smiling. “You should see yourself. That day in the sun did you good. A few more like it, and you’ll look right at home on the Big Rez.”

Despite himself, Carson felt a hot fury mounting inside. De Vaca had an unerring instinct for searching out his sensitive spots and homing in on them mercilessly. Somehow, he’d allowed himself to believe that the terrifying ordeal they had shared would change her. Now he wasn’t sure if he was more angry with de Vaca for remaining her sarcastic self, or at himself for his foolish self-delusion.

“Tú eres una desagradecida hija de puta,” he said, the anger giving his words a startling clarity.

A curious expression came over de Vaca’s face as the whites of her eyes grew large and distinct. Her casual pose in the sand grew rigid.

“So the cabrón knows more of the mother tongue than he’s let on,” she said in a low voice. “I’m an ingrate, am I? Typical.”

“You call me typical?” Carson retorted. “I saved your ass yesterday. Yet here you are again today, slinging the same shit.”

“You saved my ass?” de Vaca snapped. “You’re a fool, cabrón. It was your Ute ancestor who saved us. And your great-uncle, who passed down his stories to you. Those fine people that you treat like blots on your pedigree. You’ve got a great heritage, something to be proud of. And what do you do? You hide it. Ignore it. Sweep it under the rug. As if you’re a better person without it.” Her voice was rising now, echoing crazily inside the cave. “And you know what, Carson? Without it, you’re nothing. You’re not a cowboy. You’re not a Harvard WASP. You’re just an empty redneck shell that can’t even reconcile its own past.”

As he listened, Carson’s fury turned cold. “Still playing the would-be analyst?” he said. “When I’m ready to confront my inner child, I’ll go to somebody with a diploma—not a snake-oil peddler who’s more comfortable in a poncho than a lab coat. Todavía tienes la mierda del barrio en tus zapatos.”

De Vaca drew in her breath with a sharp hiss, and her nostrils flared. Suddenly she drew back her hand and slapped him across the face with all her strength. Carson’s cheek burned and his ear began to buzz. He shook his head in surprise, noticed she had drawn back to hit him again, and caught her hand as it swung toward him a second time. Balling her other hand into a fist, de Vaca lashed out at him, but he ducked, tightening his grip on her imprisoned hand and thrusting it from him. Overextended, de Vaca fell backward into the pool and Carson, caught off guard, fell across her.

The slap and the sudden fall had driven the fury out of Carson. Now, as he lay across de Vaca—as he felt her hard lithe body struggle beneath his—an entirely different kind of hunger seized him. Before he could stop himself he leaned forward and kissed her, deliberately, on the lips.

“Pendejo,” de Vaca gasped, fighting for breath. “Nobody kisses me.” With a violent wrench, she freed her arms, balling her dripping hands into fists. Carson watched her warily.

They stared at each other for a moment, motionless. Water dripped from de Vaca’s fists onto the dark, warm surface of the pool. The echoes died away until the only sounds that remained were those made by the droplets of water, falling between their labored breaths. Suddenly, she grabbed Carson by the hair with both hands and crushed her mouth to his.

In a moment her hands were everywhere, sliding up beneath his shirt, caressing his chest, teasing his nipples, tugging at his belt and worrying down his fly and easing him out and stroking him with long urgent movements. She sat up and raised her arms as he shrugged off her top, tossed it aside, and then pulled hungrily at her jeans, already soaked black with the warm spring water. An arm went around his neck as her lips brushed his bruised ear and her pink cat’s tongue darted in and she whispered words that brought a burning to the back of his scalp. He tore her panties away as she fell into the water, gasping or crying, he wasn’t sure which, her breasts and the small curve of her belly rising slick from the surface of the spring. Then he was in her and her legs were locked over the small of his back as they found their rhythm and the water rose and fell around them, crashing against the sand like the surf of the world’s dawn.

Later, de Vaca looked over at Carson, lying naked on the wet sand.

“I don’t know whether to stab you or fuck you,” she said, grinning.

Carson glanced up. Then he rolled toward her, ‘raising an arm to gently smooth a tangle of black hair that had fallen across her face.

“Let’s have another go at the latter,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”

The dawn turned to noon, and they slept.

Carson was flying, soaring above the desert, the twisted ribbons of lava mere specks beneath him. He struggled higher, lifting himself toward the hot sun. Ahead, a huge narrow spire of rock thrust itself up from the desert, ending in a sharp point miles above the sands. He tried to crest the point, but it seemed to grow as he climbed, taller and taller, reaching for the sun. ...

He awoke with a start, heart racing. Sitting up in the cool darkness, he looked out at the mouth of the cave, then back toward its dim interior, as the realization that had escaped him earlier burned its way into him like a firebrand.

He stood, put on his clothes, and stepped outside. It was almost two o’clock, the hottest time of the day. The horses had recovered well, but would need to be watered once more. They’d have to leave within the hour if they wanted to make Lava Gate by sunset. That would get them to Lava Camp by midnight, or perhaps a little later. They would still have thirty-six hours to get their information into the hands of the FDA before the scheduled release of PurBlood.

But they couldn’t leave. Not yet.

Turning to the horses, he tore two strips of leather from the saddle rigging. Then he gathered up an armful of mesquite sticks and dead creosotebush, which he arranged into two tight bundles. Lashing the bundles together with the leather strips, he turned and walked back toward the cave.

De Vaca was up and dressed. “Afternoon, cowboy,” she said as he entered the cave.

He grinned and approached her.

“Not again,” she said, poking him playfully in the stomach.

He leaned closer and whispered in her ear. “Al despertar la hora el águila del sol se levanta en una aguja del fuego.”

“At dawn the eagle of the sun rises on a needle of fire,” she translated, a puzzled expression on her face. “That was the legend on Nye’s treasure map. I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it today.”

She looked at him a moment, frowning perplexedly. Then her eyes widened. “We saw an eagle this morning,” she said. “Silhouetted against the rear of the cave by the dawn sun.”

Carson nodded.

“That means we’ve found the place—”

“—The place Nye has been searching for all these years,” Carson interrupted. “The location of Mondragón’s gold.”

“Only he was off by almost a hundred miles.” De Vaca glanced back into the darkness. Then she turned toward Carson. “What are we waiting for?”

Carson lighted the end of one of the bundles, and together they moved back into the recesses of the cave.

From the large pool where it emerged out of the earth, the spring flowed back into the cave in a narrow rivulet, sloping downward at a slight angle. Carson and de Vaca followed its course, peering into the ruddy gloom created by the torch. As they approached the rear wall of the cave, Carson realized it was not a wall after all, but a sudden drop in the level of the ceiling. The floor of the cave dropped as well, leaving a narrow tunnel through which they had to stoop. In the darkness ahead, Carson could hear the sound of splashing water.

The tunnel opened into a high narrow cavern, perhaps ten feet across and thirty feet high. Carson held the torch aloft, illuminating the mottled yellow surface of the rock face. He moved forward, then stopped abruptly. At his feet, the stream tumbled off a cliff, splashing down into a yawning pool of blackness. Holding the torch in front of him, Carson peered over the edge.

“See anything?” de Vaca asked,

“I can just barely see the bottom,” he said. “It must be fifty feet down, at least.”

There was a sliding sound and Carson instinctively drew back. A handful of small rocks crumbled off the lip of the cliff and bounced down into the darkness, echoing hollowly as they went.

Carson tested the ground in front of him. “All of this rock is loose and rotten,” he said, moving gingerly along the cliff face. Finding a more stable spot, he dropped to his knees and leaned over the edge again.

“There’s something down there,” de Vaca said from the far side of the cliff edge.

“I see it.”

“If you’ll hold the torch,” de Vaca said, “I’ll climb down. This way looks easier.”

“Let me do it,” Carson said. De Vaca flashed him a dark look.

“OK, OK,” he sighed.

Moving toward a spot where the cliff face had collapsed, de Vaca half climbed, half slid down the rubbled slope: Carson could barely see her moving down in the gloom.

“Throw the other torch down!” she called at last.

Shoving a book of matches between the sticks, Carson tossed down the second bundle. There was a moment of fumbling, then the sound of a match being struck, and suddenly the chasm below was illuminated by a flickering crimson light.

Peering farther over the edge, Carson could clearly see the outline of a desiccated mule. The animal’s pack was broken open and pieces of manta and leather were lying about. A number of large whitish lumps could be seen protruding through the ruined pack. Nearby lay the mummified body of a man.

In the lambent light of the brand, he could see de Vaca examine first the man, then the mule, then the ruined pack. She picked up several scattered objects, tying them into the loose ends of her shirt. Then she came scrabbling back up the talus slope.

“What did you find?” Carson muttered as she approached.

“I don’t know. Let’s get into the light.”

At the cave entrance, de Vaca untied the ends of her shirt. A small leather pouch, a sheathed dagger, and several of the whitish lumps tumbled onto the sand.

Carson picked up the dagger, carefully sliding it from its sheath. The metal was dull and rusted, but the hilt was intact, preserved beneath a mantle of dust. He wiped it against his sleeve and held it up to the sun. Chased in silver on the iron hilt were two ornate letters: D M.

“Diego de Mondragón,” he whispered.

As de Vaca tried to open the stiff leather bag, it broke in half and one small gold coin and three larger silver coins fell onto the sand. She picked them up and turned them over in her hands, marveling as they glinted in the light.

“Look at how fresh they are,” she said.

“What about the packs?” Carson asked.

“They were half-filled with white stones like these,” de Vaca said, pointing to the whitish lumps. “There were dozens of them. The saddlebags were full of it.”

Carson picked up one of the blocks and examined it curiously. It was cool and fine-grained, the color of ivory.

“What the hell is it?” he murmured.

De Vaca picked up the other piece, hefting it curiously. “It’s heavy,” she said.

Removing his arrowhead, Carson scratched at the lump. “But it’s fairly soft. Whatever it is, it’s not rock.”

De Vaca rubbed the surface with one palm. “Why would Mondragón have risked his life carrying this stuff, when he could have been carrying extra water and ...” She stopped abruptly. “I know what this is,” she announced. “It’s meerschaum.”

“Meerschaum?” Carson asked.

“Yup. Used for pipes, carvings, works of art. It was extremely valuable back in the seventeenth century. New Mexico exported large quantities of it to New Spain. I guess Mondragón’s ‘mine’ was a meerschaum deposit.” She looked at Carson and grinned.

A stricken look crossed Carson’s face. Then he slumped back in the sand, laughing to himself, “And all this time, Nye has been searching for Mondragón’s lost gold. It never occurred to him—it never occurred to anybody—that Mondragón might have been carrying some other kind of wealth. Something practically worthless today.”

De Vaca nodded. “But back then, the value of the meerschaum in that pack might easily have been worth its weight in gold. Look at how fine the grain is. Today, it might be worth four, maybe five hundred dollars.”

“What about the coins?”

“Mondragón’s bit of spending money. The dagger is probably the only thing of real value here.”

Carson shook his head, looking back into the cave. “I suppose the mule began to wander into the rear of the cave, and he chased after it. Their combined weight must have collapsed the edge of that cliff face.”

De Vaca shook her head. “When I was down there, I found something else. There was an arrow, lodged deep in Mondragón’s breastbone.”

Carson looked at her, surprised. “It must have been the servant. So the legend was wrong: They weren’t looking for water. They had found water. But the servant decided to take the treasure for himself.”

De Vaca nodded. “Maybe Mondragón was looking for a place to hide his treasure, and didn’t see the cliff edge in the darkness. There were loose pieces of lava lying on top of the body as well as around it. The mule was killed in the fall, and the servant decided there was no point in waiting around any longer.”

“You said the saddlebags were half-full, right? He probably put Mondragón out of his misery, took what he could carry, and started back south. He would have taken the doublet as protection from the sun. Only it wasn’t enough. He got as far as Mount Dragon.”

Carson continued to stare at the cave mouth as if waiting for it to tell them the story. “So that’s the end of the Mount Dragon legend,” he said at last.

“Perhaps,” de Vaca replied. “But legends don’t die all that easily.”

They stood silently in the bright afternoon sun, staring at the coins in de Vaca’s outstretched hand. At last, she placed them carefully in the pocket of her jeans.

“I think it’s time we saddled the horses,” Carson said, picking up the dagger and shoving it into his belt. “We need to get to Lava Gate before sunset.”

Nye sat in his perch high up among the rocks, feeling the late-afternoon sun on his hat and the waves of solar radiation rising off the surrounding lava, clasping him in their stifling embrace. He raised his rifle and, using the scope, carefully scanned the southern horizon. No sign of Carson and the woman. He raised the sight, scanning again. No sign of circling vultures, either.

“They’re probably holed up somewhere, snogging.” The boy threw a rock down the slope, clattering and bouncing. “That girl’s just dead common.”

Nye grimaced. Either they’d found themselves a spring, or they were dead. Most likely the latter. Perhaps it took a while for the rot to really set in and draw the buzzards. After all, the desert was large. The birds might have to follow the scent from quite a distance. How long in this heat would it take a body to really give off an odor: four, maybe five hours?

“Game of come-catch-a-blackbird?” the boy asked, shoving a grubby handful of lava pebbles at him. “We’ll use these instead of aggies.”

Nye turned to him. The boy was dirty and one nostril was rimed with dried snot. “Not now,” he said, gently. He raised his scope and panned the horizon again.

And then he saw them: two figures on horseback, perhaps three miles away.

Levine maneuvered himself quickly sideways as the gun went off. Turning the trackball, he saw a neat, round hole in the oculus window behind him. The Scopes-figure raised the gun again.

“Brent!” he typed frantically. “Don’t do this. You must listen.”

Scopes sighed. “For twenty years, you’ve been a thorn in my side. I did everything I could for you. In the beginning, I offered you an equal partnership, fifty percent of GeneDyne stock. I’ve refrained from responding to your vicious attacks, while you grew fat and powerful by feeding off negative publicity about GeneDyne. You took advantage of my silence to attack me again and again, to accuse me of greed and selfishness.”

“You kept silent only because you hoped I’d sign the corn-patent renewal,” Levine typed.

“That’s a low blow, Charles. I did it because I still felt a kind of friendship for you. At first, I confess, I didn’t take your carping seriously. We’d been so close at school. You were the only person I’d ever met who was my intellectual equal. Look what we did together: we brought X-RUST into the world.” A bitter laugh sounded through the elevator speaker. “That’s the side of the story you don’t like to tell the press, do you? The great Levine—the noble Levine—the Levine that would never sink to the level of Brent Scopes—was the coinventor of X-RUST. One of the greatest cash cows in the history of capitalism. I may have found the Anasazi corn kernels, but it was your brilliant science that helped me to isolate the X-RUST gene, to develop the disease-resistant strain.”

“It wasn’t my idea to make billions off poor people in Third World countries.”

“What profit I made from it was minuscule measured against the productivity increase,” Scopes replied. “Have you forgotten that, with our rust-resistant strain, world corn output increased fifteen percent, and the price of corn actually dropped? Charles, people who would otherwise have starved to death lived because of the discovery. Our discovery.”

“It was our discovery, yes. But it wasn’t my wish to turn that discovery into a tool for greed. I wanted to release it into the public domain.”

Scopes laughed. “I haven’t forgotten that naive desire of yours. And surely you haven’t forgotten the circumstances that allowed me to profit from it. I won, fair and square.”

Levine had not forgotten. The memory seared his soul with a guilty fire. When it was clear that the two of them had irreconcilably different wishes for the X-RUST gene, they had agreed to compete for it. To play the game for it: the Game, the one they had invented at college. This time, it had been for the ultimate stakes.

“And I lost,” Levine replied.

“Yes. But the last laugh is yours, isn’t it, Charles? In two months, the corn patent expires. Since you’ve refused to renew your half, the patent will lapse. And the most lucrative discovery in GeneDyne history will be the world’s to use as they see fit, at no charge.”

Suddenly, blending with the sound of Scopes’s voice, Levine heard a babble of other voices: loud and insistent, echoing harshly down the elevator shaft.

They were coming to get him in real space as well.

There was a lurch that pressed Levine against the elevator wall. Above him, a motor hummed into life, and the cool voice spoke once again: The malfunction has been corrected. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

The elevator groaned, thumped, then began to climb.

On the giant screen, Levine saw the Scopes-figure turn away from him, looking out one of the garret windows. “It doesn’t matter now whether I shoot you here or not,” he said. “When your elevator arrives on the sixtieth floor, you’re corporeal body is going to be terminated, anyway. Your cyberspatial existence will be moot.”

The figure turned back and looked at him, waiting.

Levine glanced up at the floor display. It read: 20.

“I’m sorry it has to end like this, Charles,” came the voice of Scopes. “But I suppose my regret is just a nostalgic artifact, after all. Perhaps, once you’re gone, I’ll be able to honor the memory of the friend I once had. A friend who changed utterly.”

The numbers were ticking off rapidly: 55, 56, 57. The whine of the lift motors lowered in a deep decrescendo as the elevator slowed.

“I could still sign the corn-patent renewal,” Levine typed.

Sixty, said the voice. Levine yanked the network connection from the socket. Abruptly, the image of the misty garret winked out, and the flat panel of the elevator wall was black once more. Levine quickly switched off his laptop. If Mime was still in GeneDyne cyberspace, he’d be thrown out immediately. But at least he could not be traced.

There was a silence as the elevator settled. Then the doors slid back and Levine, cross-legged on the floor, looked up to see three guards in the blue-and-black GeneDyne uniform staring down at him. All three were holding pistols. The lead guard raised his gun, aiming for Levine’s head.

“I’m not cleaning it up,” said a guard at one side.

Levine closed his eyes.

They had filled both canteens and drunk from the spring until their bodies refused to swallow any more. Now, as they rode along the base of the mountains, Carson could feel the coolness slowly creep back into the air. Overhead, a late-afternoon sun hung above the barren summits.

Another fifteen miles to Lava Gate, then perhaps twenty more to Lava Camp. Since most of their traveling would be under cover of darkness, they needn’t fear running out of water again. The horses were probably each carrying fifty pounds of water in their bellies. There was nothing like a bad thirst to scare a horse into drinking when he had the water.

He dropped back slightly, watching de Vaca. She sat erect in the saddle, her long legs relaxed in the stirrups, her hair floating behind like a black wind. She had a sharp, strong profile, Carson noticed, with a finely pointed nose and full lips. Odd he’d never seen it before. Of course, he thought, a full biosuit isn’t exactly the most flattering piece of clothing.

She turned. “What are you looking at, cabrón?” she asked. The golden afternoon light was refracting in her dark eyes.

“You,” he said.

“What do you see?”

“Someone I—” He paused.

“Let’s get back to civilization before you make any hasty declarations,” she said, turning away.

Carson grinned. “I was going to say, someone I’d like to pin to a bed. A real bed, not just a bed of sand. Writhing in ecstasy, preferably.”

“That bed of sand wasn’t so bad.”

He sat back in the saddle with an exaggerated grimace. “I think half the skin of my back must be underneath your nails right now.”

He pointed to the horizon. “See that notch in the distance, where the mountains and the lava seem to meet? That’s Lava Gate, the northern end of the Jornada. From there, we just aim for the North Star. It’s less than twenty miles to Lava Camp. They’ll have hot food and a phone. And maybe even a real bed.”

“Oh, yeah?” asked de Vaca. “Ouch. My poor butt.”

Nye sighted down the barrel of the Holland & Holland, checked the brush scope, and secured the magazine. Everything was ready. Placing the buttstock between his feet, he checked the muzzle end for any obstructions. He’d cleaned it a hundred times since that piss-artist Carson had plugged it up, that day in the desert. But it didn’t hurt to make sure.

The two figures were now a mile away. In less than ten minutes, they’d be coming into range. Two fast, clean shots at four hundred yards. Then two more to pay the insurance, and a couple for the horses. They’d never even see him.

It was time. He eased the rifle into position, then lay on the hard lava, snugging his cheek into the stock. He began taking slow, deep breaths, letting the air ease out his nostrils, slowing his heart rate. He’d shoot between heartbeats for greater accuracy.

He raised his head imperceptibly and glanced around. The boy was gone. Then Nye spotted him, dancing on a lava rock on the other side of the slope. Far away from the action.

He settled into position again, lining up the sights and slowly swiveling the barrel across the desert floor until the two figures appeared between the crosshairs.

“Don’t shoot!” came a voice from behind the guards. “I’ve got Mr. Scopes on the intercom.” Words were exchanged. The gun barrel lowered, and one of the guards pulled Levine roughly to his feet.

He was led down a dim corridor, past a large guard station, then a smaller one. As the group turned into a narrow hallway flanked by rows of doors, Levine realized he had taken this trip once before: hours earlier, when he navigated through GeneDyne cyberspace with Phido at his side. As he walked, he could hear the hum of machinery, the low susurrus of ventilators and air exchangers.

They stopped outside the massive black door. Levine was instructed to remove his shoes and don a pair of foam slippers. A guard spoke into his radio, and there was the sound of electronic locks being released. There was a hissing sound, and the door popped ajar. As a guard pulled it open, air rushed out, buffeting Levine’s face. He stepped-inside.

The octagonal office looked nothing like the garret of Scopes’s cyberspace. It was vast, dark, and oddly sterile. The bare walls climbed ponderously to the high ceiling. Levine’s gaze moved from the ceiling, to the famous piano, to the gleaming inlaid desk, to Scopes. The CEO of GeneDyne sat on his battered sofa, keyboard on lap, looking sardonically back at Levine. His black T-shirt was dirty and stained with what appeared to be pizza sauce. In front of him, a giant screen still contained an image of the parapet outside the garret of the ruined house. In the distance, Pemaquid Point Light was blinking over the dark water.

Scopes stabbed a key, and the screen went abruptly black.

“Frisk him for weapons or electronic devices of any kind,” Scopes said to the guards. He waited until the guards withdrew. Then he looked at Levine, making a tent of his fingers. “I’ve checked the maintenance logs. You seem to have spent quite some time in that elevator. Fifteen hours, give or take. Would you care to refresh yourself?”

Levine shook his head.

“Have a seat, then.” Scopes indicated the far end of the sofa. “What about your friend? Would he like to join us? I mean, the one that’s been doing all the difficult work for you. He’s left his signature all over the network, and I’d very much like to meet him and explain the dim view I take of his activities.”

Levine remained silent. Scopes looked at him, smiling and smoothing down his unruly cowlick. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it, Charles? I must admit, I’m a bit surprised to see you. But not half as surprised as I am by your offer to sign the renewal, after all these years of adamant refusal. How quickly we lose our principles when we face the ultimate test. ‘It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.’ Or to die for them. Correct?”

Levine sat down. “ ‘To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a wise man,’ “ he quoted.

“That’s ‘civilized man,’ Charles. You’re rusty at The Game. Do you remember the last time we played it?”

A look of pain crossed Levine’s face. “If I’d won, we wouldn’t be here today.”

“Probably not. I often wonder, you know, just how much of your frantic antigenetics campaigning over the years was really just self-loathing. You loved The Game as much as I did. You risked everything you believed in for that final game, and you lost.” Scopes sat up and placed his fingers on the keyboard. “I’ll have the papers printed up for your signature right away.”

“You haven’t heard my terms,” Levine said evenly.

Scopes turned. “Terms? You don’t seem to be in a position to dictate any. Either you sign, or you die.”

“You wouldn’t actually murder me in cold blood, would you?”

“Murder,” Scopes repeated slowly. “In cold blood. I suppose such sensationalist language is your stock in trade now. But yes, I’m afraid I would—not to put too fine a point on it, as Mr. Micawber would say. Unless you sign the patent renewal.”

There was a silence. “My terms are one more game,” Levine said.

Scopes looked back in disbelief. Then he chuckled. “Well, well, Charles. A—what do they call it—grudge match? And for what stakes?”

“If I win, you destroy the virus and let me live. If I lose, I’ll sign the corn-patent renewal and you can kill me. So you see, if you win, you get another eighteen years of exclusive royalties on X-RUST, and you can sell the virus to the Pentagon. If you lose, you lose both the corn patent and the virus.”

“Killing you would be easier.”

“But much less profitable. If you kill me, the corn patent will not be renewed. That eighteen-year renewal alone is probably worth ten billion dollars to GeneDyne.”

Scopes thought a moment, letting the keyboard slide from his lap. “Let me counter that last offer. If you lose, instead of killing you, I’ll bring you aboard GeneDyne as vice-chairman and chief scientist. It’s my original offer, updated, with a salary and stock options commensurate with your stature. We’ll turn back the clock, start all over again. Naturally, you will cooperate in every way, and cease these senseless attacks on GeneDyne and technological progress in general.”

“Instead of death, a pact with the devil, you mean. Why would you do this for me? I’m not sure I trust you.”

Scopes grinned. “What makes you think I’d be doing it for you? Killing you would be messy and inconvenient. Besides, I’m not a murderer, and there’s always the chance it would weigh on my conscience. Really, Charles, I haven’t enjoyed destroying your career. It was a purely defensive move.” He waved his hand. “However, just letting you go back into the world like a loose cannon, to snipe at me at your leisure, is not a viable option either. It is in my interests to convince you to join the company, cooperate, sign the usual nondisclosure forms. If you wished, you could sit in your office here all day, doing nothing. But I think you would find a much more rewarding path in research and development—helping to cure sick people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in genetic engineering, either. Pharmaceuticals, biomedical research, whatever: You could write your own ticket. Devote your life to creating, instead of destroying.”

Levine stood up, facing the huge screen, now blank and featureless. The silence grew. At last, he turned to face Scopes. “I accept,” he said. “However, I need a guarantee that you’ll destroy that virus if you lose. I want you to remove it from the safe and place it on this table between us. If I win, I’ll simply take the vial out of here and dispose of it properly. If it is, in fact, the only vial.”

Scopes frowned. “You of all people should know that. Thanks to your friend Carson.”

Levine raised his eyebrows.

“So it’s news to you, is it? From the reports I’ve received, it appears that son of a bitch blew up Mount Dragon. Carson Iscariot.”

“I had no idea.”

Scopes looked at him speculatively. “And I thought you were behind it. I assumed it was revenge of a sort for what I’d done to your father’s memory.” He shook his head. “Well, what’s nine hundred million when ten billion are at stake? I agree to your terms. With one proviso of my own. If you lose, I don’t want you to renege on the corn-patent renewal. I want you to sign the papers now, in the presence of a notary. We’ll place the agreement on the table in front of us, along with the vial. If I lose, you get both. If I win, I get both.”

Levine nodded.

Pulling the keyboard back onto his lap, Scopes began typing rapidly. Then, reaching for a phone, he spoke briefly. A moment later, there was a chime; then a woman entered bearing several sheets of paper, two pens, and a notary seal.

“Here’s the document,” Scopes said. “Sign it while I get the virus.”

He moved toward a far wall, ran his fingers along its surface until he felt what he was looking for, then pressed against it. There was a snap, and a panel swung outward. Scopes reached inside and quickly tapped a number of keys. There was a beep and a click, and then Scopes reached his hand farther inside and pulled out a small biohazard box. Bringing it to the inlaid table, he opened it and removed a sealed glass ampule three inches wide and two inches high. He carefully placed the ampule on top of the document Levine had signed, then waited until the notary left the Octagon.

“We’ll play by our old rules,” he said. “Best two out of three. We’ll let the GeneDyne computer pick a topic at random from its database. If there are any challenges, do you agree that the computer should resolve them?”

“Yes,” said Levine.

Scopes flipped a coin, slapped it onto the back of his hand. “You call it.”

“Heads.”

Scopes removed the covering hand. “Tails. I start the first subject.”

De Vaca ceased singing the old Spanish song that had kept them company for the last several miles, and fell back slightly, taking a moment to breathe the desert air in deep, reverent draughts. The setting sun had tinged the desert with gold. It felt wonderful to be alive, to simply be on this horse, headed out of the Jornada and toward a new life. For the moment, it didn’t matter what that life was. There were so many things she had taken for granted, and she swore never to allow herself to make that mistake again.

She looked at Carson, riding ahead on Roscoe, angling toward the high narrow gap of Lava Gate. She wondered, almost idly, how he would fit into that new life. Immediately, she dismissed the thought as being much too complicated. Plenty of time to think about that later.

Carson turned, noticed that de Vaca was no longer beside him, and slowed. He turned back with a smile as she approached, then leaned over on impulse to stroke her cheek with the back of one hand.

She felt a sudden spray of wetness across her face. The sensation of moisture in the desert was so foreign that she automatically closed her eyes against it, turning her face away and raising her hand protectively. She wiped her face and her hand came away bloody, a small jagged shard that looked like bone stuck to one of her fingers. At the same moment she heard a loud crack roll across the landscape.

Suddenly, everything began to happen at once. She looked forward to see Carson toppling forward on his horse just as her own mount bolted at the sharp noise. She grabbed desperately at the saddle horn as something whined past her ear. Another report boomed across the desert.

They were under fire.

Roscoe was heading for the base of the mountains at a dead run. De Vaca urged her horse to follow, lashing her heels into its flanks, hugging its neck, hoping to make a smaller target. She craned her neck upward, trying to steady her vision against the lurching and pounding. Ahead, she could see Carson hunched over the saddle. Blood was running freely down Roscoe’s flank and shivering off in droplets, cascading into the sand. Another shot sounded, then another.

The horses dashed toward a cul-de-sac in the lava flow, and pulled up short. Several more shots came in rapid succession and Carson’s horse whirled to escape, eyes wild, throwing Carson out of the saddle and onto the sand. De Vaca jumped from her horse and landed next to Carson as both animals ran blindly back out into the desert. There was another report, followed by the horrible scream of a horse in pain. De Vaca turned. Roscoe’s belly had been blown open, a length of intestine spilling out between his legs like a gray streamer. The animal ran for a few hundred yards, then came to a trembling stop. There was another report, and de Vaca’s horse fell kicking to the sand. Another bullet, and a fine red spray rose from its head. The animal jerked its hind legs twice, spasmodically, then lay still.

She crawled toward Carson. He was lying in the sand, curled in on himself, knees up around his chest. Blood was turning the sand around him to a slippery red paste. She turned him gently and he cried out. Quickly, her eyes searched for the wound. His left arm was completely soaked in blood, and she carefully pulled away a piece of his torn shirt. The bullet had taken a huge piece out of his forearm, shattering the radius and peeling the muscle and flesh back, exposing the ulna. In a moment the sight was obscured again by blood, which jetted freely from the severed radial artery.

Carson rolled sideways, his body stiffening in agony.

De Vaca turned quickly, looking for something she could use as a tourniquet. She didn’t dare cross the field of fire toward the horses. In desperation, she ripped off her own shirt, rolled it tightly, and knotted it just below Carson’s elbow, twisting it until the flow subsided.

“Can you walk?” she whispered.

. Carson was speaking under his breath. She leaned closer, listening. “Jesus,” she heard him moan. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Don’t crap out on me now,” she said fiercely, tying off the tourniquet and grabbing him under the armpits. “We’ve got to take cover behind those rocks.” With a supreme effort Carson rose shakily to his feet and staggered toward the cul-de-sac, then took a few steps into the rocks and collapsed again behind a large boulder. De Vaca crawled in behind him and examined his wound, her stomach rising at the sight. At least now he wouldn’t bleed to death. She sat back and looked him over quickly. His lips looked oddly blue. There didn’t seem to be any other wounds, but with all the blood it was difficult to tell. She tried not to think what it would mean if Nye hit him a second a time with that terrible rifle.

She had to think, and think quickly. Nye must have realized that he couldn’t catch them by tracking. So he’d somehow guessed they were headed for Lava Gate, and gone ahead to cut them off. He’d destroyed their horses, and soon he’d be coming for them.

She tugged Mondragón’s dagger out of Carson’s belt. Then she dropped it in the sand in frustration. What the hell good was it against a man with an express rifle?

She peered over the rock and there was Nye, in the open now, kneeling and taking aim. Immediately a bullet whined inches from her face, striking the rocks behind her. Powdered stone stung the back of her neck in a sharp spray. The gun’s report followed an instant later, echoing and bouncing among the rock formations.

She hunched down again behind the rock, then moved along behind it, peering out from another angle. Nye had risen to his feet once again and was walking toward them. His face was hidden in the deep shadow of his hat brim and she could not make out his expression. Only a hundred yards away now. He was simply going to walk up and kill them both. And there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Carson moaned and clutched at her, trying to say something.

She moved back behind the boulder, turning away from Nye, and waited. Waited for the massive blow to the back of her head that would signify the arrival of the bullet. She could hear boots crunching toward them, and she covered her head with her hands, closing her eyes tightly, preparing herself as best she could for death.

A single word appeared on the massive screen before them:

vanity

Scopes thought a moment in silence. Then he cleared his throat. “ ‘No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.’ Dr. Johnson.”

“Very good,” said Levine. “ ‘A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly but vanity.’ Rousseau.”

“ ‘I used to be vain, but now I’m perfect.’ W.C. Fields.”

“Wait a minute,” Levine said. “I’ve never heard that one.”

“Are you challenging me?”

Levine thought a moment. “No.”

“Then proceed.”

Levine paused. “ ‘Vanity plays lurid tricks with the memory.’ Conrad.”

Immediately, Scopes replied. “ ‘Vanity was Evolution’s most obnoxious gift.’ Darwin.”

“ ‘A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: He wants to win applause.’ Goethe.”

There was a silence.

“Have you run dry?” Levine asked.

Scopes smiled. “I am merely considering my selection. ‘Every man at his best state is altogether vanity.’ Psalm thirty-nine.”

“I didn’t know you were religious. ‘Surely every man walk-eth in a vain show.’ Same psalm.”

There was another long pause.

Scopes said, “ ‘I only know we loved in vain; I only feel—farewell! farewell!’ Byron.”

“Scraping the bottom of the barrel, I see,” Levine snorted.

“Your turn.”

There was a long silence. “ ‘A journalist is a kind of con man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.’ Janet Malcolm.”

“I challenge you,” said Scopes instantly.

“Are you kidding?” Levine asked. “You can’t possibly know that quotation. I only remember it because I incorporated it into a recent speech.”

“I don’t know it. I do know, however, that to me Janet Malcolm is perhaps best known as a writer for The New Yorker. I doubt their grammarians would have allowed such a phrase as ‘con man.’ ”

“A far-fetched theory,” Levine said. “But if you want to base your challenge on it, be my guest.”

“Shall we see what the computer says?”

Levine nodded.

Using the keyboard, Scopes entered a search string into the computer. There was a pause while the vast databases were scanned. At last, a quotation appeared in large letters beneath the word

vanity

“Just as I thought,” Scopes said triumphantly. “It’s not ‘con man.’ It’s ‘confidence man.’ The first round goes to me.”

Levine was silent. Scopes instructed the computer to bring up another topic at random. The vast screen cleared, and another word appeared:

death

“Broad enough,” Levine said. He thought a moment. “ ‘It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ Woody Allen.”

Scopes laughed. “One of my personal favorites. ‘Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.’ Mizner.”

Levine said. “ ‘We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.’ La Bruyère.

Scopes: “ ‘Most people would die sooner than they think; in fact, they do so.’ Russell.”

Levine: “ ‘Misers are very kind people: they amass wealth for those who wish their death.’ King Stanislaus.”

Scopes: “ ‘When a man dies, he does not just die of the disease he had; he dies of his whole life.’ Péguy.”

Levine: “ ‘Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile.’ Wilde.”

Scopes: “ ‘Death is that after which nothing is of interest.’ Rozinov.”

“Rozinov? Who the hell is Rozinov?”

Scopes smiled. “You wish to challenge me?”

“No.”

“Then proceed.”

“ ‘Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.’ Forster.”

“How nice. How Christian.”

“It’s not just a Christian idea. In Judaism, the idea of death is meant to inspire one to live a righteous life.”

“If you say so,” Scopes said. “But I’m not especially interested. Don’t you remember?”

“Are you delaying because you’ve run out of quotations?” Levine prompted.

“ ‘I am become Death: destroyer of worlds.’ The Bhagavad-Gita.”

“Very appropriate, Brent, for your line of business. It’s also what Oppenheimer said when he saw the first atomic explosion.”

“Now it sounds like you’re the one running out of quotations.”

“Not at all. ‘Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.’ Revelation.”

“His name that sat on him? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Are you challenging me?” Levine asked.

Scopes was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head. “ ‘Philosophy dies just before the philosopher.’ Russell.”

Levine paused. Bertrand Russell?”

“Who else?”

“He never said any such thing. You’re making up quotations again.”

“Indeed?” Scopes looked back impassively.

“Your favorite trick in school, remember? Only I think I can spot them more easily now. That’s a Scopesism if ever I heard one, and I challenge you.”

There was a short silence. At last, Scopes smiled. “Very good, Charles. One for you, one for me. Now for the final round.”

The screen cleared, and a new word appeared:

universe

Scopes closed his eyes a moment. “ ‘That the universe is comprehensible is incomprehensible.’ Einstein.”

Levine paused. “You’re not foolish enough to start making up quotes already, are you?”

“Challenge me if you like.”

“I think I’ll let that one pass. ‘Either we are the only intelligent life-form in the universe, or we are not. Either possibility is staggering.’ Carl Sagan.”

“Carl Sagan said that? I don’t believe it.”

“Then challenge me.”

Scopes smiled and shook his head. “ ‘It is inconceivable that the whole universe was merely created for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun.’ Byron.”

“ ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’ Einstein.”

Scopes frowned. “Is it legal to use the same source twice in a single topic? That’s the second time you’ve done so.”

Levine shrugged. “Why not?”

“Oh, very well. ‘Not only does God play dice with the universe, but sometimes He throws them where they cannot be seen.’ Hawking.”

“ ‘The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.’ Weinberg.“

“Very good,” Scopes said. “I like that one.” He paused. “ True comprehension of the universe is given only to drugged teenagers and senile cosmologists.’ Leary.”

There was a silence.

“Timothy Leary?” Levine asked.

“Of course.”

The silence lengthened. “I don’t think Leary would have said something quite so puerile,” Levine said.

Scopes smiled. “If you doubt it, challenge me.”

Levine waited, thinking. It had been one of Scopes’s favorite stratagems, making up quotations toward the beginning and saving the real ones for later, as a way to play out Levine’s own store of quotations. Levine had known Leary from his Harvard days, and in his gut he felt this quotation sounded wrong. But then, another of Scopes’s tricks had been to use out-of-character quotations as a way to goad Levine into challenging him. He glanced at Scopes, who was staring back, impassively. If he challenged Scopes, and Leary had said it, after all ... He shook the thought from him mind.

The seconds ticked away.

“I challenge you,” Levine said at last.

Scopes started visibly. Levine watched as the color drained from the face of the GeneDyne CEO. He was contemplating—just as Levine had contemplated, years ago—what it meant to have lost on such a vast scale.

“It burns, doesn’t it?” Levine asked.

Scopes remained silent.

“It’s not the losing so much,” Levine continued. “It’s how you lost. You’ll think back on this moment, always. Wondering at how you threw it all away on such a trivial mistake. You won’t be able to forget it, ever. I know I still can’t.”

Still, Scopes did not speak. Half-lost in an overwhelming sense of relief, Levine saw Scopes’s hand twitching and realized—a split second before it happened—that the GeneDyne CEO would never give up his deadly virus. Twenty years ago, when Levine had lost at their ultimate round of the Game, he’d stuck to his word. He’d signed the corn patent and let Scopes grow rich on the discovery, rather than giving the marvelous secret to the world. Now, Scopes had lost, on an even grander scale. ...

Levine grabbed for the ampule just as Scopes’s hands flashed out. Two hands closed around it at once. There was a brief struggle as each man tried to claim it for his own.

“Brent!” Levine cried. “Brent, you gave your word—”

There was a sudden, dull popping sound. Levine felt a sharp sting; then a dampness spread across his palms.

He forced himself to look down.

The viral transport medium, with its deadly suspension of X-FLU II, was spreading in a puddle over the signed contract and running off the table onto the floor, staining the gray carpet black. Levine opened his hand: shards of glass were embedded in his palm, lines of blood diluted by the hot medium running down his wrist. His palm hurt as he flexed it.

He looked up again, watching as Scopes slowly opened his own hand. It, too, was torn and bloody.

Their eyes met.

Carson was tugging at her arm, trying to say something. “Mondragón’s gold,” he gasped at last.

“What about it?” de Vaca whispered.

“Use it.” A spasm of pain crossed his face and he fell back into the sand, where he remained, motionless.

As Nye’s footsteps came closer, she suddenly understood what Carson meant. Digging into her pocket, she pulled out the four coins she’d taken from the cave.

“Nye!” she called. “Here’s something that ought to interest you.”

She lobbed the coins over the rock. The footsteps ceased. Then there was a sharp intake of breath, a whispered curse. The footsteps approached again, and then she could hear his heavy breathing, coming up between the rocks, and she crouched with her head bowed, waiting. Something she knew must be the barrel of Nye’s big rifle was suddenly pressed hard against the base of her skull.

“Count of three,” she heard Nye say, “to tell me where you got these.”

She waited, saying nothing.

“One.”.

She waited.

“Two.”

She sucked in her breath, squeezed her eyes tightly closed.

“Three.”

Nothing happened.

“Look at me,” Nye said at last.

Slowly opening her eyes, she turned around. Nye was standing above her, one booted foot balanced on a rock, his tall form silhouetted against the setting sun. The safari hat and long English coat that before had always seemed so ridiculous to her now seemed utterly terrifying, a strange specter of death in this remote desert. He was holding the gold coin in one hand. His bloodshot eyes dropped to her naked breasts a moment, then moved up again, his face expressionless. He shifted the barrel to her temple. More seconds passed. Turning on his heel, Nye strode back out into the sand. De Vaca waited a moment, then jerked spasmodically at the sound of another shot. There was a deep, wet sighing sound.

He’s killed Roscoe, she thought. Now he’s looking through the saddlebags for more gold.

In a moment, Nye returned. Quickly, he reached down and grabbed de Vaca’s hair, yanking her rudely to her feet. She felt her roots ripping as he jerked her head hard to one side. Then, with a brutal shove, he threw her back against the rocks that rose at the end of the cul-de-sac. He swung the rifle around and jabbed it deep into her stomach. She bent forward, crying out, and he yanked her up again by the hair.

“Listen to me very carefully now. I want to know where you got this coin.”

She dropped her eyes and gestured with her chin to the sand at her feet. He glanced down, saw the dagger, and reached for it. He looked closely at the handle.

“Diego de Mondragón,” he whispered. Then he stepped closer. She had never before seen eyes so bloodshot; the edges of the whites were crimson, almost black.

“You found the treasure,” he hissed.

She nodded.

He swiveled the rifle back toward her face. “Where?”

She looked into his eyes. “If I tell you, you’ll kill me. If I don’t tell you, you’ll kill me. Either way, I’m dead.”

“Bitch. I won’t kill you. I’ll torture you to death.”

“Try it.”

He balled his fist and struck her directly in the face. She felt the shock of impact; then a terrific buzz sounded in her ears and a strange heat rushed into her head. She tipped forward, feeling faint, but he pushed her back against the sharp rock.

“It won’t work,” she said again. “Look at me, Nye.”

He struck her again. The landscape around her turned white and featureless for a moment, and she felt blood gush from her mouth. Her sight returned and she raised a hand to her face, realizing she had lost a tooth.

“Where,” he said again.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and remained silent, stiffening for the next blow.

The footsteps moved away, and she heard Nye speaking in a low tone. She could hear the pauses as he waited for somebody else to answer. Who was he talking to? Singer, probably, or one of the Mount Dragon security guards. She felt the slender thread of hope inside her begin to part;, they had been so certain Nye was alone.

The footsteps came back and she slitted open her eyes. Nye was pointing his rifle at Carson’s head.

“Tell me or he dies.”

She took a deep breath now, steadying herself. This, she knew, was going to be the hardest part. “Go ahead and shoot the cabrón,” she said as evenly as possible. “I can’t stand the redneck son of a bitch. And if you do, the gold will be all mine. I’ll never tell you. Except ...”

He swiveled the gun toward her. “Except what?”

“A trade,” she croaked.

She did not feel the blow as the butt of the rifle swung toward her head, but a pool of blackness rushed suddenly up to meet her. Consciousness returned, and with it a searing pain across one side of her skull. She kept her eyes closed. Again, a voice: Nye was still talking to someone. She listened for an answering voice, but it did not come. At last she cracked open her eyes. The sun had set, and it was much darker now, but she was still reasonably certain that he was speaking to no one.

Despite the pain, relief coursed through her. PurBlood was doing its terrible work.

Nye turned toward her, noticed she was conscious. “What kind of trade?” he asked.

She turned away, closing her eyes and bracing for another blow.

“What kind of trade,” she heard him repeat.

“My life,” she said.

There was a silence. “Your life,” he repeated. “I accept.”

“My life isn’t worth shit without a horse, that gun, and water.”

There was a silence, and then another terrible blow came. This time, consciousness returned slowly. Her body felt heavy and full of sleep. Breathing was difficult, and she knew her nose must be broken. She tried to speak without success, and felt herself falling back into the sweet black pool of unconsciousness.

When she came to again, she was lying on soft sand. She tried to raise herself, but white-hot pain flashed through her skull and down her spine. Nye was standing over her, flashlight in hand. He looked worried.

“One more blow like that,” she whispered, “and you’ll kill me, you bastard. Then you’ll never learn where the gold is.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes.

In a few minutes, she spoke again. “It’s a hundred miles from where you think it is.”

“Where?” he cried.

“My life for the gold.”

“Very well. I promise I won’t kill you. Just tell me where the gold is.” He turned suddenly, as if he had heard something. “Yes, yes, I remember,” he said to somebody else. Then he turned back.

“The only way I’ll live,” she whispered, “is with the horse, gun, and water. Without that, I die, and you’ll never know ...” She lapsed into silence.

Nye stared down at her, gripping the coins so fiercely in one hand that his entire arm was shaking. A sound like a whimper escaped from his throat. From the way he was looking at her, she knew her face must look terrible.

“Bring over your horse,” she said.

Nye’s mouth twitched spasmodically. “Tell me now, please—”

“The horse.”

Her eyes closed of their own accord. When she was able to open them again, Nye was gone. She sat up, fighting against the pain in her head. Her nose and throat were full of blood, and she coughed several times, trying to breathe.

She saw Nye reappear at the opening in the rocks, his magnificent horse trailing behind him in the moonlight like a silent shadow.

“Tell me where the treasure is,” he said.

“The horse,” she replied, struggling to her feet and holding out her left hand.

Nye hesitated a moment, then handed her the reins. She grabbed the saddle horn and tried to climb into the saddle, almost falling from dizziness.

“Help me.” He cupped one hand beneath her boot, hoisting her up.

“Now the gun.”

“No,” Nye replied. “You’ll kill me.”

“Give it to me unloaded, then.”

“You’ll double-cross me. You’ll ride ahead and take my treasure.”

“Look at me. Look into my eyes.”

Reluctantly, he looked up at her with his blood-rimmed eyes. Only now, as she looked into those eyes, did she realize how deeply the desire for Mondragón’s treasure ran through him. PurBlood had turned a simple eccentricity into a ruinous obsession. Everything, even his hatred of Carson, was secondary to his need for the treasure. She realized, with a mixture of fear and pity, that she was looking on a broken man.

“I promise, I won’t take your treasure,” she said almost gently. “You can have it, all of it. I just want to get out of here alive. Can’t you see that?”

He unloaded the gun and gave it to her.

“Where,” he urged. “Tell me where.”

There were two water bags tied to the cantle, each one half-full. She unlooped one and gave it to Nye, then began backing Muerto away from him. Obsession or no obsession, she didn’t want him trying to retrieve his gun after she had given him the location.

“Wait! Don’t go. Tell me, please—”

“Listen carefully. You’re to follow our tracks back about ten miles, along the base of the lava. Watch for the spot where we hobbled our horses. You’ll find a hidden cave in the lava there, at the base of the mountains. Inside the cave is a spring. At dawn, the sunlight entering the cave will throw an image against the rear wall in the shape of an eagle, balancing on a needle of fire. Just like on your map. But the wall doesn’t lead all the way to the cave floor; there’s a hidden passage at its base. Follow it. Mondragón’s body, his mule, and his treasure are at the bottom of a cavern.”

He nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, I understand.” He turned to his imaginary companion. “Did you hear that? All this time, I’ve been searching the wrong part of the desert. I’d assumed the mountains on the map were the Cerritos Escondidos. How could I have ...” He turned again to de Vaca. “Back this way ten miles, did you say?”

She nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said to his imaginary companion as he shouldered the water bag. “We’ll split it fifty-fifty. Mum would have insisted.”

He began walking out of the rocks and into the desert.

“Nye” de Vaca called out.

He turned.

“Who’s your friend?”

“Just a boy I knew once,” he said.

“What’s his name?”

“Jonathan.”

“Jonathan who?”

“Jonathan Nye.” He turned and hurried away. She watched him shuffle off, talking excitedly. Soon he had disappeared around a point of lava and into the night.

De Vaca waited several minutes until she was sure he had gone. Then she dismounted and moved slowly toward Carson. He was still unconscious. She felt his pulse: weak and rapid, definitely shocky. Gingerly, she examined the shattered forearm. It was leaking blood, but only slightly. Loosening the tourniquet, she was relieved to see that the severed artery had sealed. Now she had to get him out before gangrene set in.

Carson’s eyes fluttered open.

“Guy!” she said urgently.

The eyes turned, focusing on her slowly.

“Can you stand?”

Whether or not he had heard, she couldn’t be sure. She grabbed him under the arms and tried to pull him up. He struggled feebly, then fell back into the sand. Pouring some water into her hands, she splashed it gently on his face.

“Get up,” she ordered.

Carson struggled to his knees, fell back on his good elbow, struggled up again, grabbed Muerto’s stirrup and pulled himself slowly to his feet. De Vaca helped him clamber onto the horse’s back, careful to keep his damaged arm from being jostled. Carson swayed, cradled his arm, blinked several times. Then he began to topple forward. De Vaca grabbed his chest, steadying him. She was going to have to tie him in place.

Nye had a cotton lead rope fixed to one side of the saddle. Uncoiling it, de Vaca tied the rope around Carson’s chest, leaning him over the saddle horn, wrapping his left arm around the horn and tying it securely in place. As she worked, she realized, with almost complete detachment, that she was shirtless. But it was dark, and she had nothing to cover herself with. Somehow it seemed very, very unimportant.

She began leading Muerto by the reins, walking directly toward the North Star.

* * *

They reached the line camp at dawn: an old adobe house with a tin roof, hidden among a cluster of cottonwood trees. Off to one side was a barn, a windmill and watertank, and a set of weathered corrals. A fresh breeze was cranking the windmill. A horse in the corral whinnied, then a dog began barking at their approach. Soon a young man, wearing red long Johns and a cowboy hat, was standing in the doorway, his mouth open as he stared at this topless woman, covered with blood, leading a magnificent paint horse with a man tied into its saddle.

Scopes stared at Levine, a mingled look of horror and disbelief on his face. At last he stepped away from the table, walked to a narrow panel in a nearby wall, and pressed a button. The panel slid up noiselessly, revealing a small wet bar and sink.

“Don’t rinse your hands,” Levine said quietly. “You’ll send the virus down the drain.”

Scopes hesitated. “You’re right,” he replied. Moistening a hand towel, he dabbed at his palms and picked out a few slivers of glass, then dried his hands carefully. Stepping away from the bar, he returned to the sofa and sat down. His movements seemed odd, hesitant, as if walking had become a suddenly unfamiliar act.

Levine glanced over from the far end of the sofa. “I think you’d better tell me what you know about X-FLU II,” he said quietly.

Scopes smoothed back his cowlick with an automatic gesture. “We actually know very little. I believe that only one human has been exposed to it. There’s an incubation period of perhaps twenty-four to sixty hours, followed by almost instantaneous death through cerebral edema.”

“Is there a cure?”

“No.”

“Vaccine?”

“No.”

“Infectiousness?”

“Similar to the common cold. Perhaps even more so.”

Levine glanced down again at his cut hand. The blood was beginning to congeal around the broken shards of the ampule. There was no question they both had been infected.

“Any hope?” he asked at last.

“None,” Scopes replied.

There was a long silence.

“I’m sorry,” Scopes said finally, in a tone so low it was almost a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Charles. There was a time when I would never have thought to do that. I—” He stopped. “I guess I’ve just grown too used to winning.”

Levine stood up and cleaned his hand with the towel. “There isn’t time for recriminations. The pressing question is how we can prevent the virus in this room from destroying mankind.”

Scopes was silent.

“Brent?”

Scopes did not respond. Levine leaned toward him.

“Brent?” he asked quietly. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Scopes replied at last. “I guess I’m afraid of dying.”

Levine looked at him. “So am I,” he said at last. “But fear is a luxury we can’t afford right now. We’re wasting precious minutes. We must figure out a way to ... well, to sterilize the area. Completely. Do you understand?”

Scopes nodded, looking away.

Levine grasped his shoulder, shook him gently. “You’ve got to be with me on this, Brent, or it won’t work. This is your building. You’re going to have to do what’s necessary to make sure this virus stops with us.”

For a long moment, Scopes continued to look away. Then he turned toward Levine. “This room has a pressure seal, and is supplied with its own private air system,” he said, collecting himself. “The walls have been reinforced against terrorist attacks: fire, explosion, gas. That will make our job easier.”

A tone sounded, and then the face of Spencer Fairley appeared on the giant screen before them. “Sir, Jenkins from marketing is insisting on speaking with you,” the face said. “Apparently, the hospital consortium has abruptly canceled plans to begin transfusing PurBlood tomorrow morning. He wants to know what pressure you’ll be bringing to bear on their administrations.”

Scopes looked at Levine, his eyebrows raised. “Et tu, Brute? It appears friend Carson delivered his message after all.” He turned back to the image on the screen. “I’m not going to bring any pressure to bear. Tell Jenkins that the PurBlood release should be rolled back, pending further testing. There may be adverse long-term effects of which we weren’t aware.” He typed a series of commands. “I’m sending a Mount Dragon data file to GeneDyne Manchester. It’s incomplete, but it may show evidence of contamination in the PurBlood manufacturing process. Please follow up, make sure they examine it carefully.” He sighed heavily.

“Spencer, I want you to run a diagnostic on the Octagon’s containment system. Make sure the seals are all in place and functioning normally.”

Fairley nodded, then moved away from the screen. In a few moments, he returned.

“The system is fully operational,” he said. “Atmospheric regulators and all monitoring devices are showing normal readings.”

“Good,” Scopes said. “Now listen carefully. I want you to instruct Endicott to unseal the perimeter around the headquarters building, and to restore all communication with the remote sites. I will be broadcasting a message to headquarters employees. I want you to send a message to General Roger Harrington at the Pentagon, Ring E, Level Three, Section Seventeen, over a clear channel. Tell him that I am withdrawing the offer and that there will be no further negotiations.”

“Very well,” Fairley said. He paused, then looked more intently at the monitor. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked.

“No,” said Scopes. “Something terrible has happened. I need your absolute cooperation.”

Fairley nodded.

“There has been an accident inside the Octagon,” Scopes said. “A virus known as X-FLU II has been released into the air supply. Both Dr. Levine and I have been infected. This virus is one-hundred-percent fatal. There is no hope of recovery.”

Fairley’s face betrayed nothing.

“We cannot allow this virus to escape. Therefore, the Octagon must be sterilized.”

Fairley nodded again. “I understand, sir,” he said.

“I doubt you do. Dr. Levine and I are carrying the virus. It is multiplying in our bodies as we speak. You must, therefore, directly supervise our deaths.”

“Sir! How can I possibly—”

“Shut up and listen. If you don’t follow my instructions, billions will die. Including yourself.”

Fairley fell silent.

“I want you to scramble two helicopters,” Scopes said. “You’re to send one to GeneDyne Manchester, where it will pick up ten two-liter canisters of VXV-twelve.” He did a quick calculation. “The volume of this room is approximately thirty-two thousand cubic feet. So we’ll also need at least sixteen thousand cc’s of liquid 1,2 cyanophosphatol 6,6,6, trimethyloxylated mercuro-hexachloride. The second chopper can obtain the necessary supply from our Norfolk facility. It must be shipped in sealed glass beakers.”

Fairley looked up from a computer screen at his side. “Cyanophosphatol?”

“It’s a biological poison. A very, very effective biological poison. It will kill anything alive in this room. Although it’s stored in liquid form, it has a low vapor point and will rapidly evaporate, filling the room with a sterilizing gas.”

“Won’t it kill—?”

“Spencer, we’ll already be dead. That’s the point of the VXV canisters.”

Fairley licked his lips. “Mr. Scopes.” He swallowed. “You can’t ask me to ...” His voice dropped away.

Scopes looked at Fairley’s image on the immense screen. Beads of sweat had sprung up around the corners of his mouth, and his iron-gray hair, normally smoothly coiffed, was coming loose.

“Spencer, I’ve never needed your loyalty more than I do now,” Scopes continued quietly. “You must understand that I’m already a dead man. The greatest favor you can do for me now is not to let me die by X-FLU II. There’s no time to waste.”

“Yes, sir,” Fairley said, averting his eyes.

“You’re to have everything here within two hours. Let me know when both helicopters are safely on the pad.” Scopes punched a key, and the screen went black.

There was a heavy silence in the room. Then Scopes turned toward Levine. “Do you believe in life after death?” he asked.

Levine shook his head. “In Judaism, we believe it’s what we do in this life that matters. We achieve immortality through living a righteous life, and worshipping God. The children we leave behind are our immortality.”

“But you have no children, Charles.”

“I had always hoped to. I’ve tried to do good in other ways, not always with success.”

Scopes was silent. “I used to despise people who needed to believe in an afterlife,” he went on at last. “I thought it was a weakness. Now that the moment of reckoning is here, I wish I had spent more time convincing myself.” He looked down. “It would be nice to have some hope.”

Levine closed his eyes for a moment, thinking. Then he opened them suddenly. “Cypherspace,” he said simply.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve programmed other people from your past into the program. Why not program yourself? That way, you—or a part of you—could live on, perhaps even dispensing your wit and wisdom to all who cared to converse with you.”

Scopes laughed harshly. “I’m not that attractive a person, I’m afraid. As you well know.”

“Perhaps. But you’re certainly the most interesting.”

Scopes nodded. “Thank you for that.” He paused. “It’s an intriguing idea.”

“We have two hours to kill.”

Scopes smiled wanly. “All right, Charles. Why not? There’s one condition, however. You must put yourself into the program, as well. I’m not going back to Monhegan Island alone.”

Levine shook his head. “I’m no programmer, especially of something as complex as this.”

“That’s not a problem. I’ve written a character-generating algorithm. It uses various AI subroutines that ask questions, engage the user in brief conversations, do a few psychological tests. Then it creates a character and inserts it into the cypherspace world. I wrote it as a tool to help me people the island more efficiently, but it could work just as well for us.”

He looked questioningly at Levine.

“And perhaps then you’ll tell me why you chose to depict your summer house in ruins,” Levine replied.

“Perhaps,” said Scopes. “Let’s get to work.”

* * *

In the end, Levine chose to look like himself, with an ill-fitting dark suit, bald head, and uneven teeth. He turned slowly in front of the unblinking video camera in the Octagon. The feed from the camera would be scanned into several hundred hi-res images that together would make up the Levine figure that-would be taking up residence on Scopes’s virtual island. Over the last ninety minutes, the AI subroutine had asked him countless questions, ranging from early childhood memories to memorable teachers, personal philosophy, religion, and ethical beliefs. The subroutine had asked him to list the books he had read, and the magazines he had subscribed to during the different periods of his life. It posed mathematical problems to him; asked about his travels; his musical likes and dislikes; his memories of his wife. The subroutine had given him Rorschach tests and even insulted him and argued with him, perhaps to gauge his emotional reactions. The resulting data, Levine knew, would be used to supply the body of knowledge, emotions, and memories that his cyberspace character would possess.

“Now what?” Levine asked, sitting down again.

“Now we wait,” Scopes said, forcing a smile. He had undergone a similar process of interrogation. He typed several commands, then sat back in the couch as the supercomputer began to generate the two new characters for his cyberspace re-creation of Monhegan Island.

A silence fell onto the room. Levine realized that, if nothing else, the interrogation had kept him occupied, kept him from realizing that these were in fact the last minutes of his life. Now, a strange mix of emotions began to crowd in on him: memories, fears, things left undone. He turned toward Scopes.

“Brent,” he began.

There was a low tone, and Scopes reached over and pressed a button on the phone beside the couch. The patrician voice of Spencer Fairley sounded through the phone’s external speaker.

“The helicopters have arrived, sir,” he said. Scopes pulled the keyboard onto his lap and began typing. “I’m going to send this audio feed down to central security, as well as to the archives, just to make sure there are no troublesome questions later. Listen carefully, Spencer. In a few minutes, I’m going to give the order for this building to be evacuated and sealed. Only yourself, a security team, and a bioemergency team should remain. Once evacuation is complete, you must shut off the air-circulation system for the Octagon. You are then to pump all ten canisters of VXV into the air supply, and restart the system. I’m not exactly sure how long it will take to ...” He paused. “Perhaps you should wait fifteen minutes. Then, send the bioemergency team to the emergency pressure hatch in the Octagon’s roof. Have Endicott depressurize the hatch from security control, instruct the team to place the beakers of cyanophosphatol inside the hatchway, then seal and repressurize the outer hatch. Once the team is clear, have the inner hatch opened remotely from security control. The beakers will fall into the Octagon and break, dispersing the cyanophosphatol.”

He looked at the screen. “Are you following this, Spencer?”

There was a long pause. “Yes, sir.”

“Even after the cyanophosphatol does its work, there will still be live viruses in the room. Hiding in the corpses. So, as a final step, you must incinerate them. The heat will denature the cyanophosphatol as well. The fireproof shell of the Octagon will keep a fire in as well as it will keep a fire out. But you must be careful not to cause a premature explosion or a dirty, out-of-control fire that might spread the virus. A fast-acting, high-temperature incendiary such as phosphorus should be used first. When the bodies have completely burned, the rest of the room should be cleansed with a lower-temperature incendiary. A napalm derivative will do. Both will be available from the restricted laboratory supplies.”

Listening, Levine noted the methodical detachment with which Scopes described the procedure: the corpses, the bodies. Those are our corpses, he thought.

“The bioemergency team should then perform a standard hot-agent decontam on the rest of the building. Once that’s finished—” Scopes stopped short for moment. “Then I guess, Spencer, it’s up to the board of directors.”

There was a silence.

“Now, Spencer, please get my executor on the line,” Scopes said quietly.

A moment later, a rough, gravelly voice sounded through the speakerphone beside the table. “Alan Lipscomb here.”

“Alan, it’s Brent. Listen, there’s to be a bequest change. Still on the line, Spencer?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Spencer will be my witness. I want fifty million set aside to fund an endowment for the Institute for Advanced Neurocybernetics. I’ll provide Spencer with the details, and he’ll pass them on to you.”

“Very well.”

Scopes typed quickly for a few moments, then turned to Levine. “I’m sending Spencer instructions to transfer the entire cypherspace databank, along with the compiler and my notes on the C³ language, to the Institute for Advanced Neurocybernetics. In exchange for the endowment, I’m asking them to keep my virtual re-creation of Monhegan Island running in perpetuity, and to allow any serious student access to it.”

Levine nodded. “On permanent display. Fitting for so great a work of art.”

“But not only on display, Charles. I want them to add to it, extend the technology, improve the depth of the language and the tools. I suppose it’s something I’ve kept to myself far too long.” He smoothed down his cowlick absently. “Any last requests, Charles? My executor is very good at getting things done.”

“Just one,” Levine said evenly.

“And that is—?”

“I think you can guess.”

Scopes looked at him for a moment. “Yes, of course,” he said at last. He turned back to the speakerphone. “Spencer, are you still there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please tear up that patent renewal for X-RUST.”

“The renewal, sir?”

“Just do it. And stay on the line.” Scopes turned back to Levine, one eyebrow raised.

“Thank you,” Levine said.

Scopes nodded quietly. Then he reached for the phone and pressed a series of buttons. “Attention, headquarters staff,” he said into the mouthpiece. Levine heard the voice echoing from a hidden speaker and realized the message was being broadcast throughout the building.

“This is Brent Scopes speaking,” Scopes continued. “An emergency has arisen that requires the entire staff to vacate the premises. This is a temporary measure, and I assure you that nobody is in danger.” He paused. “Before you leave, however, I must inform you that an alteration is being made in the GeneDyne chain of command. You will learn the details shortly. But let me say now that I have enjoyed working with every one of you, and I wish you and GeneDyne the very best of luck in the future. Remember that the goals of science are our goals, as well: the advancement of knowledge, and the betterment of mankind. Never lose sight of them. And now, please proceed to the nearest exit.”

Finger on the switch hook, Scopes turned to Levine.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Levine nodded.

Scopes released the switch hook. “Spencer, you are to present all tapes of this event to the board next Monday morning. They must carry on according to the tenets of the GeneDyne charter. Now, please begin introducing the VXV gas. Yes. Yes, I know, Spencer. Thank you. Best of luck to you.”

Slowly, Scopes replaced the handset. Then he returned his hands to the keyboard.

“Let’s go,” he said.

There was a humming noise, and the lights dimmed. Suddenly, the huge octagonal office was transformed into the garret room of the ruined house on Monhegan Island. Gazing around, stunned, Levine realized that not just one, but each of the room’s eight walls was a vast display screen.

“Now you know why I chose the turret room,” Scopes said, laying the keyboard aside again.

Levine sat on the sofa, entranced. Outside the garret windows, he could clearly see the widow’s walk. The sun was just coming up over the ocean, the sea itself absorbing the colors of the sky. The seagulls wheeled around the boats in the harbor, crying excitedly as the lobstermen rolled barrels of redfish bait down the pier and onto their boats.

In a chair in the garret, a figure stirred, stood up, stretched. It was short and thin, with gangly limbs and thick glasses. An unrepentant cowlick stood like a black feather from the unruly mass of hair.

“Well, Charles,” it said. “Welcome to Monhegan Island.”

Levine watched as another figure on the far side of the garret—a bald man in an ill-fitting dark suit—nodded in return.

“Thank you,” it said, in a voice hauntingly familiar.

“Shall we wander into town?” the Scopes-figure said.

“Not just now,” the Levine-figure said. “I’d prefer to sit here and watch the boats go out.”

“Very good. Shall we play the Game while we wait?”

“Why not?” said Levine-figure. “We’ve got a lot of time to kill.”

Levine sat in the darkened Octagon, watching his newly created character with a wistful smile.

“A lot of time to kill,” said Scopes from the darkness. “An infinity of time to kill. So much time for them, and so little time for us.”

“I choose time as a keyword,” said the Levine-figure.

The Scopes-figure sat down again in the rickety chair, kicked back, and said:

“There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create ...”

Levine—the real Levine—smelled a strange odor in the air of the Octagon; pungent, almost sweet, like long-dead roses. His eyes began to sting and he closed them, listening to the voice of the Scopes-figure:

“And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me ...”

There was a silence, and the last thing Levine heard as he drew the acrid gas into his lungs was his own voice, reciting an answering quotation: “ ‘Time is a storm in which we are all lost ...’ ”